


The Problem of Bodies (Part 3: The Garbage Dump)

by Mz_Mallow



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Child Death, Coming of Age, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Ghost Mettaton, Ghosts, Headcanon, Other, Trans Mettaton (Undertale), Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-27 18:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12588080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mz_Mallow/pseuds/Mz_Mallow
Summary: Part 3 of 4 (or 5) Life has complications when you're incorporeal in a society full of corporeal monsters; more so when you're not quite like other ghosts. Feisttablook leaves Blook Acres, moving towards becoming Mad Dummy. Happstablook and Napstablook each also face a sort of exile. Set in game backstory. Also features the 6 human children between Chara and Frisk. [TEMPORARILY on hiatus]





	1. newNewNEW Home

**Author's Note:**

> Explanation of the hiatus on my tumblr: http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/post/180922572235/to-readers-of-the-problem-of-bodies-i-have

Feist flew. Flew without consciously knowing the destination. Flew as if physical speed could outpace regret and horror. Flew high, with wooden base held well clear of any branches or surfaces that might have scuffed or banged it, because now it was the only home left.

Finally forced to the ground by sheer exhaustion, Feist blinked through a heavy miasma of emotions and recognized the surroundings. There _was_ someplace left to go. Of course. This was New Home City. Perching, gargoyle-like, on the edge of a roof and staring across the city did nothing to still Feist’s shaking soul, but did provide enough energy to continue on to Ghost Town.

On that last turn from the corporal folks’ neighborhoods, where the bakery stood, Feist stopped and stared. The tiny bakery was just where it had been during Feist’s previous visit, with the same brightly painted sign that looked like a piece of cake… but a new sign had been added. It was a pair of ghosts, as cartoonishly painted as the giant cake: an adult ghost holding a cupcake and smiling beatifically, and a baby ghost so fat they were practically spherical. The ghosts’ faces were too generically sketched in to be recognizable, but the adult was a familiar buttercream color. Feist stood looking at it for a long moment before continuing on to Ghost Town.

The remaining distance passed without thought or intention, and then, jarring in its seemingly sudden appearance, there was the familiar house.

There was Remi, their off-white dummy body almost appearing to glow in the dimness under the building’s shadow. With them was a small ghost child, the color of fresh pine wood, playing with a saggy balloon. Remi had manifested a little ghost-duplicate in the shape of a dummy; as Feist watched, it kicked its blobby transparent imitation of a base, nudging the balloon over to the child. Remi’s posture was relaxed, and they didn’t spare one glance up towards the cavern ceiling; their attention was wholly focused on the child.

When Feist approached Remi looked up, and their face broke into a smile of recognition and welcome. Feist knew, suddenly, that something about them had changed; and as they leaned forward to speak a few words to the child, what the change meant. Remi’s body moved with ease and their face was radiant with clearly expressed emotion. They had fused with their body; they were corporeal. Feist felt a wave of blistering jealousy, and close behind it a surge of self-recrimination. Remi was a lot older. Remi had been waiting a long time for this. Remi deserved to have what they wanted. _But did they want it as badly?_ Feist pushed back that kind of thinking and hopped forward to greet Remi with the joy that they would expect, that they deserved to see.

“Congratulations! Congratulations! CONGRATULATIONS! I think I should wish you double congratulations?”

Remi nodded, a wide smile crinkling their eyes. They rocked their body lightly on their base to show they had caught Feist’s meaning. “Yes! Thank you! Let me introduce you…” The ghost child was watching with the solemn curiosity that children reserved for untested strangers. Remi nuzzled them. “Sweetheart, meet Feisttablook. Feist…. This is Caykremiyoo.”

“Cay… Cay… Cake.” Feist nodded, and winked at Remi sideways in good-natured teasing. “You really liked that bakery.”

“I _really_ liked that bakery,” Remi echoed, ducking their head to one side, voice bashful and pleased. “And constantly worrying about whether I felt content enough had been making me feel worried instead of content… who could have guessed it?” they finished with a sardonic lilt.

Feist took gentle little hops to approach the child, who was clutching their balloon and watching with huge eyes, surprised at seeing a second dummy-ghost who was so like-parent and yet not-parent. “Do you like eating cake too?” Feist prompted, voice high and friendly.

The child’s mouth dropped open in a look like horror. They squinted and made a gagging sound, eyes striking Feist with a look of disgust, before tossing the balloon aside and zipping to hide behind their parent.

Feist’s soul dropped and twisted — was it even possible to lose more family members in one day? — but Remi was laughing, a laugh full of amusement laced with embarrassment. “Oh my… I’m so sorry… It’s just…” Cake peeked around Remi’s torso and gave Feist an accusatory glare, which only made Remi laugh harder. Seeing Feist’s genuine consternation, they sobered up enough to tell their story.

“When Cake was ready to bring out of the house,” Remi said, “I took them to the bakery to thank the staff for helping make my dream come true. It was wonderful: the staff were so nice, and they acted like Cake was absolutely the cutest thing they’d ever seen. One of them asked if he could give Cake a little bit of cake to taste, and I said that would be okay. And then the manager came out, and asked if the bakery could use a painting of our happy family as an advertisement, and…” Remi was blushing warmly, hunching their neck, “I’m not used to that kind of attention! I got distracted. And I knew Cake was safe with the staff. But one of the staff gave them a little bit of cake, and another gave them another bit of cake, and then customers started giving them more and more cake… before I knew what was happening, they were puking all over the place! Since then they haven’t touched anything sugary. Can’t even stand the thought of eating sweets.”

“Oh…” Feist managed a laugh that was more like a cough, feeling Remi’s good nature and contentment like a warm sunbeam piercing sodden murky clouds, and peeked around their side at the child. “I won’t give you anything to eat that you don’t want.” Cake bopped in the air in a nod of satisfaction. They tossed their balloon away and chased after it.

Remi’s head tilted back in an easy gesture. “So… what brings you to Ghost Town?”

The weight of reality came crashing back down in a suffocating wave. Feist struggled to get the words out, even though they’d been repeating over and over just under the edge of consciousness for the whole trip. “You said that I could come back.” The words weren’t enough, but offering more explanation felt beyond reach, so Feist just repeated them, voice getting thicker and thicker. “Had to go home. But you said! That I could. Come back.”

Remi’s expectations slipped away, and they finally truly saw Feist: the tremble of exhaustion, eyes deep and haunted, body folded in on itself. “What happened?” they breathed. And then, with a rising note of panic, “Where’s Napstablook? Where are…?”

Feist’s answer was dead flat. “They’re home. They’re safe.”

Remi stared for a long moment. “Do you want to tell me about it?” they asked, hushed.

Feist looked at Cake playing, a brief flick of eyes, and looked at the ground.

When Remi spoke again their voice was full of sympathy. “Hark is upstairs.”

Feist nodded, the gesture nearly undoing an already-tenuous ability to stay upright, and dragged to the door and up the stairwell. The door to the lower apartment was closed. Feist stared at it for a long minute before calling up the strength to knock. After several seconds it cracked open, and a button eye sewn on pink plush peeked out. “Oh! Hello,” Harkmello said. “I’m with a client now. I’ll meet you upstairs afterwards.” Feist followed the instructions.

The upper apartment had changed. The photographs of ghosts had all been taken down. The desk was well-ordered and meticulously neat… Remi must have had strong nesting urges while they were brooding. Just under the window was a cushion bed, the type favored by dog and cat monsters, slightly shabby but clean and soft.

It was excruciating to stay still, to wait, to wonder what would happen; a restless feeling, like having Migosps scuttling beneath the cloth surface. Even though Remi’s response had been heartening, Feist worried about Hark, and catatrophized the conversation. It had been too long since Remi’s offer. There was a baby now; there was no room. Feist’s worries about being despised, being unloved, swelled in the stillness.

After several long minutes, footsteps sounded in the apartment below. The door downstairs opened, the click of the latch audible in the quiet house; the footsteps receded, and the building’s outer door opened and shut. Feist waited. And waited. It felt like a long time before there was a soft padding on the landing just outside the upper apartment’s door, the hinge creaked, and Hark peeked in, tall in their tea-dark brown doll body.

As Hark opened the door, Feist rallied the strength to smile, and said, “Aww, you didn’t have to bring your nicest body just to see me.” It had been intended as a compliment. And as self-deprecation. But the expression that fell across Hark’s face wasn’t flattered, or playful, or supportive, or any other fitting expression; it was ashamed. Feist was stunned, and confused, and too tired to be diplomatic about it. “What?”

Hark looked down to where their feet rested heavy against the floorboards. They were quiet for a moment, and when they spoke, the words came out quickly, compelled by some hidden thought. “If I’d worn my feminine body up here, would that be weird? Or the training dummy… would it be awkward if you and I were wearing the same thing? Or if I came up without a body, would that make you feel bad?”

Feist was taken aback, and sputtered, “I wouldn’t think any of those things. I think all your bodies are really cool…” And then understood. And flushed with rage; not at Hark, but at yet another betrayal, another wound from the family left behind. “You’re worried because of how Happy acted last time we were here. You’re afraid of what you think they think. You’re afraid I think it too.”

Hark picked up their head in surprise and opened their mouth to protest; but nothing came out, because Feist was right.

Feist’s voice crackled with earnestness. Thoughts scrambled about faster than Fleet zipping across the New Home skyline. Words tumbled out over each other. “Listen. I can’t… that is… I don’t know what Happy was thinking. Why they acted the way they did. Whatever it was, was wrong. Because… because any ghost who would turn you down must be wrong. A fool! AN IDIOT. You’re kind and thoughtful and interesting and a good friend and you’ll make a great parent and any ghost would be super lucky if you chose them, and And AND”

Without fully intending it, Feist had drawn closer, taken on an edge of supplication. Hark’s glass eyes had gone deep with surprise. A quietness stretched out between them before Hark responded. “Feist…” they ventured, voice bell-like with amazement, “Are you… courting me?”

Feist stopped. Looked down. The words almost came faster than the thought was realized. “I guess I am.”

Hark’s fuzzy face darkened with a pleased purple undertone; a half-smile appeared. Then they glanced away, a flicker of uncertainty marring their smile. “But I’m not… um…”

They didn’t need to explain; their bashful tone was clear enough. Not currently sexual.

“I’m not either,” Feist said, more defensively than intended. _Although if past experience repeated, after so much upheaval, that would change sooner or later_. “I didn’t say all of that out of… just some moment of passion or something. It’s what I really think. All the time.”

Hark’s smile returned, a full smile; but then their forehead wrinkled with concern. “But with your soul and my soul… with the way you feel about having a body and becoming corporeal, and the way I feel about expressing gender… how would our children feel? Like either one of us? Like both of us at the same time? That would be hard on them.”

Feist felt that fear as well, but pushed it aside, forging ahead. “But it won’t be like it was for us. We’ve had it hard because we felt _alone_.” The word reminded Feist of the reason for coming here; that thought, too, was tamped down. “No matter how our children feel, they’ll each have one of us.”

This courtship was like careening down a waterfall, thrilling and terrifying, wondering if the rock looming ahead in the water was a safe refuge or a slippery roadblock leading to an even more treacherous fall. Feist had come to Remi’s household to claim the place in their family that had been promised… but courting Hark would mean having to leave this family too. _Would that be so bad?_ It would mean starting a new family… and wasn’t that just what Staid had done when they carried their children to Waterfall, away from other ghosts, to found Blook Acres?

As for staying… _Then what would happen when Napstablook came back to Ghost Town?_ They would, eventually. They loved the culture, and they loved Remi and their family. Some wild and hurting voice inside Feist said, _You could take that away from them, the way they took your family from you_ … but only for a moment. Timid, uncertain Napstablook thrived on their visits to the city. Feist couldn’t deny them that. And it wasn’t even possible… As if Remi could be expected to choose one extended-family member over another. _And if they were forced to choose… why would they want me?_

Hark wasn’t aware of these thoughts; they thought Feist was weighing the future in the same way they were: considering children’s future, not the family’s present. Their eyes fixed on Feist with sudden intensity, as they said, “Do you know why I can make a living doing what I do?”

“Huh?” The question ripped Feist from a self-deprecating spiral back into the moment. “Uh… why?”

Hark’s eyes dropped to the side in regret. “People come to me because they have problems, because they’re hurting. So they talk, and I listen, and they feel better. And they go home. And nothing ever changes. Sooner or later they come back for another dose of comfort, enough to let them tolerate their situation a little longer. I wish I could fix their problems for them, but I can’t.” Hark looked back up at Feist, sharply. “You… and all of you Blooks… you aren’t like that. You have this ability… you decide that something needs to change, and then you _make it happen_.” Their eyes burned at Feist with urgency to be understood, and with awe at the thought of monsters with even a bit of _determination_. “Do you know how rare that is, here in the Underground?”

Feist’s feelings were a cacophony. The last day had been a non-stop rush through the strongest emotions... Suddenly the thought of feeling an ordinary and appropriate sense of pride was unbearable.

Feist’s façade slipped. And just as Remi had in the street, Hark saw the reality ooze through, heartbreak where there should have been pleasure. “What’s wrong?” they implored.

Feist cringed. “It’s it’s it’s… not you.” Time to head off the other inevitable question. “And the other…” Saying _the other Blooks_ suddenly felt wrong, too presumptuous, like it was a lie to imply inclusion in that name. “Napster and Happy are fine.”

Hark’s eyes went narrow with concern and wide with attention. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” They asked, their head making a dip of encouragement, a nudge.

Only one answer was possible. “No.” But that sounded so harsh. “Not now.”

Hark was quiet for a long moment, waiting, thinking. “How can I help? What do you want?” they asked.

Feist searched inside and found only one answer, just one thing that was possible and in reach. “I… I… I want to be held.”

A half-hour later Remi and Cake ascended to the upper apartment, Remi handling the steps with greater ease now that their soul and body were fused, Cake rising up the stairwell with the eagerness of a fresh helium balloon. The room was empty. As Remi and Cake snuggled into the cushion bed for a nap, Remi pictured Feist and Hark out walking the streets of the City.

In the apartment below, training dummy and doll lay together on the couch, the training dummy’s head cradled against the doll’s chest.


	2. Lies

Full awareness of what had happened to the human children, and Feist’s absence, settled over Blook Acres like a smothering fog. Underneath it Happy’s emotions roiled and reeled like tides against a rocky coast. In some way, mourning Patience and Anders was the easy part. It was a pure grief, and it was shared with Napstablook and, far away, with Staid and Toriel. That tragedy was over, nothing more could be done, and that gave Happy some freedom to deal with his feelings piece by piece when he felt strong enough.

Coming to terms with Feist’s betrayal and exile was the part that felt impossible. Happy compulsively remembered the last interactions the two of them, the three of them had had, rehearsing different outcomes that hadn’t happened and would never happen now, and careened between bitter anger and sadness and disbelief and painful impossible hope that there could be some way to reconcile.

Happy found Napstablook inscrutable. After Feist left, they had drifted into the blue house and fallen into a sleep so deep and so long that Happy started to worry. Then they had floated back out and methodically, stoically, began to work. They took an inventory of all the remaining pens and snails, they hovered over pencil and paper writing in fits and starts, and then they confronted Happy in front of the pink house and wordlessly presented him with a schedule of chores designed for only two ghosts.

Gripping the schedule’s crisp paper in his stub-arms, Happy watched them turn away and spoke, his voice cracking like ice on a Snowdin lake under the force of Ice Wolf’s saw. “Hey, Napster…”

Napstablook turned back around and looked at him, face blank. Happy hadn’t actually thought of anything to say. He cast about for something, something gentle, to break the silence, to crack the shell of denial covering the thing that had happened.

“… Who told you that Patience’s name was Patstablook?”

For a moment more Naptablook was still, white and translucent, looking like a figurine made of fragile porcelain. When they spoke, their voice was matter-of-fact, quotidian. “I figured it out myself. Patience was family. Staid and Toriel were raising her together. Toriel let Staid give their first child a ghost name.” Their voice softened, gained a faint warmth. “Isn’t that just like Toriel?”

It _was_ just like Toriel. Or, would have been, had it happened. But it hadn’t; so why did they think it had? Happy took a moment to consider, then gave a little bob to encourage them. “I never heard you call her Patstablook before. Why not?”

Napstablook was wide-eyed in a restrained sort of way, like they couldn’t believe that Happy was being so dense. “Their first child had a traditional ghost name, so Toriel gave their second child a traditional boss monster name.”

Happy didn’t know what boss monster naming traditions might be, but he was pretty sure there was no reason behind many names in the Underground, including Asriel’s, beyond Asgore’s terrible sense of wordplay. He bobbed encouragement anyway.

“Well…” Napstablook continued, with deliberate slowness, “Anders wasn’t named… um, Staidiel… or uh… Torstablook… so he must have been named after his human parents. He was big enough to remember them.” Happy was beginning to understand; Napstablook sometimes had trouble grasping or felt overwhelmed by social conventions, so they’d put together this story as a way to find order. He put on a supportive smile and waited for them to finish their explanation. “…That means one of his parents was named Andy. But the other parent…” Napstablook’s voice dropped to a mortified whisper “… must have been named… Er?”

The syllable sprung out of Napstablook’s mouth as a confused grunt. Secondhand embarrassment pulled their gaze to the ground. “… that’s what you say when you can’t think of anything… I didn’t want to remind anyone about a name like that… how awful…”

Happy tried to nod again. But instead he snorted, and coughed, and then all of a sudden he was laughing. His emotions boiled over, uproarious and cathartic, shockingly inappropriate and unavoidable.

Napstablook drew back in the air with a grimace of surprise, indignant. “It could happen! _Your_ name was almost a burp. It’s true… Gerson told me so.”

Happy doubled over, sinking towards the ground, gripped with laughter.

A little high-pitched sound came from deep inside Napstablook’s ectoplasm, as they wavered between clinging to the point they were making and letting themself imitate Happy, and then they were laughing too.

Happy drew close to them, half to give them support and half so he had something to lean against himself. He held them, wheezing, and their forms shook with laughter together.

Happy gasped and his breathing slowed, but Napstablook still trembled against his side. They weren’t laughing anymore; they were crying. Their sobs deepened and went jagged and then they were hyperventilating, their acidic tears and quick uneven gasps combining until their tears foamed rather than spilled out of their eyes.

Happy held them, leaned close against them until the first wave of their grief had spent itself. He floated back just far enough to look into their crumpled face. A flood of love and protectiveness filled his soul. His family needed him. His family needed t… th… _them_. And he would be that _them_ for Napstablook’s sake. This new responsibility, the devotion he felt for his family, would finally cure him of his impossible dream about “myself”… it had to.

“Don’t cry anymore, Napstablook,” he soothed, brushing tear-suds from their face. “We’ll be okay. I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna take care of Blook Acres.”

“… oh…” Napstablook breathed, a shadow of a smile of reassurance touching their face.

“I just need you to make sure I don’t do anything stupid,” Happy finished with a lilt of humor.

“… oh…” said Napstablook, looking less than confident.

“Let’s visit Staid…” Realization struck Happy’s soul in a paralyzing bolt. He fixed his eyes on Napstablook’s in horror. “ _What are we gonna tell Staid?_ ”

* * * * *

The familiar trip to the ruins of Home felt longer than ever before. Every landmark — the dark reflective pools, the faint glow of Snowdin reflecting against the high cavern ceiling, the fragrant pine forest — carried a memory of four Blooks traveling together, or a memory of Feist.

The two Blooks reached the locked gate to the Ruins and phased through — it was so painfully quick and easy when neither of them had a body — and continued on through the claustrophobic tunnels.

Nearing the Dreemurr house stairs, Happy called out, a subdued _ooooo_ , and he and Napstablook stopped and waited. Staid floated down from the upper floor almost immediately, leaving Happy with a mix of relief, dread, and dismay. Staid’s single button eye looked like a piece of glass that been at the bottom of the sea and ground down by sand and tides, and they moved their body as if it had doubled in weight since the last time they’d seen each other. They hugged Napster and Happy in turn. “I’m so glad to see you,” they said, their voice quiet and raspy, but warm and relieved. “Toriel’s in her room. I don’t think she’ll want to come out. But come up, come up… let me give you something to eat.”

Happy wanted nothing more than to go on into the well-lit, soft-edged living room and collapse, to let Staid take care of him; for a moment, to return to a childhood when pain and loss were temporary. But Staid looked down the tunnel, squinted in surprise, and said what Happy knew was coming and had been dreading. “Where’s Feist?”

Happy forced his face not to react and suppressed a bloom of anxious hot pink. He had spent the trip trying to think of an answer, and he still had nothing. He couldn’t tell Staid the truth, but he couldn’t blatantly lie in front of Napster. His gut instinct was to rely on his well-honed ability to bullshit. He set his face in an expression that split the difference between reassurance and regret, and opened his mouth.

Napstablook spoke. “… Th… they went on a quest… like you did…” Their voice trailed off and they looked at the ground, tears welling in their eyes.

It was perfect. Napstablook’s lack of skill at telling lies only made it better: their fumbling the words came across as preoccupation with Staid’s reaction, their fearful expression as reluctance to bear sad news. And that last phrase was so manipulative… Happy felt a pulse of disgust and admiration. He completed the lie. “…They were so sad about Patience and Anders… They said the only thing that could make them feel better is if they achieve their life’s dream and fuse with their body.” He saw Napstablook bob in agreement in his peripheral vision, and watched Staid to gauge if they had bought it.

Staid looked at Napster for a long, still moment. Their eye flicked to Happy, and they saw he shared the same expression as Napstablook. The corner of their mouth tightened, pulled downward. With a nod of empathy, Staid said, “Good for them.”

* * * * *

The next day, full of food, lethargic with physical comfort, Happstablook and Napstablook drifted home. Despite their slow, procrastinating pace, Blook Acres eventually emerged from the humid air, its sweet colors looking as flavorless as a piece of chalk. In the few remaining pens snails still slid about, carrying their homes with them, seeking limp leaves to gnaw.

Napstablook drifted to the blue house and phased inside. A moment later, the clang and thump of tools against wood echoed through the walls. They were getting right back to work.

Happy hovered in the yard for several minutes, starting one way and then stopping and turning back, feeing useless. “Hey, I’ll go check the old storage attic in the pink house, see if there’s any calcium left up there,” he called at the blue house’s wall, more to reassure himself than to communicate with Napstablook, who probably couldn’t even hear him over the noise they were making.

He crossed the yard to the pink house and phased in. Its interior was simple but neat and comfortable, and regularly-swept (the blue house tended to accumulate dust and cobwebs, since neither Napstablook nor Happstablook gave much thought to housework). It held a lamp on a low leaf-shaped table and a simple cushion bed; Happy would have to get rid of that, it smelled of cotton and made him feel as if Feist was still there. Happy remembered Feist asking him to stay out of the upper storage room. It was probably full of grungy secondhand clothes. He steeled his resolve and phased upwards.

The little window in the upper room was covered with a small, thick curtain. Happy felt for its edge, pulled it aside, turned to look at the room behind him, and dropped the curtain in surprise; the room plunged back into darkness. He pulled the curtain aside again, feeling out the hook to keep it out of the way, and turned to gaze in amazement. The room held… a work of art; that was the only way to describe it. It was a collection of snail shells, gathered season after season, cleaned and polished to show off their bright stripes of yellows and reds and greens, and arranged into patterns and groups and gradients. It was a mosaic. It was beautiful.

Happy gazed at it for a long time, feeling wonder, and the return of the emotions that had been assailing him for days, and on top of it all a fresh, acute sense of loss. He knocked down the little curtain and hid the room in darkness again.

* * * * *

Napstablook was out in the fields when Happy returned to the blue house, shoved open the main door from the inside, and exited carrying the most massive bag of minerals he could; not because such a large amount was needed for the few operational snail pens, but because testing his strength made him feel good.

He caught up with Napstablook, who was feeding droopy vegetables to the snails and softly complimenting them on their size and speed.

“Wouldn’t you know? Nothing’s left in that top floor,” Happy said. Napstablook looked up briefly, gave a blink of acknowledgement, and turned back to their task.

“Hey… Napster… would you mind if…?” he ventured. Napstablook stopped working and turned their deep, damp eyes on him.

Happy fumbled and recovered his thoughts. “I’ve enjoyed sharing the blue house with you. Living with you is the best!” His cheerfulness sounded tinny. “But… the pink house looks kind of… Y’know, empty. Kind of… sad. It might be a good idea if I… move in there now?”

Napstablook floated in place, their normal quiet disconcerting. Happy felt caught between too many lies, and judged for them all. He kicked the cheerfulness in his voice up another notch and pressed the idea. “I was just thinking, you’ll have more room for your music collection. You could lay them out, so it’d be easier to admire them. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Napstablook finally gave a bob of assent. “It’s a good idea…” they intoned, their voice not unkind or hurt, just distant. “… The house shouldn’t be lonely while Feist is away.” Happy’s soul constricted at the name. Did Napstablook believe their own lie? Did they not understand that the punishment they had set was one that would never end?

Napster leaned against Happy in a hug, twisting to keep their vegetable-stained arms away from his ectoplasm, and turned back to the pen. They floated still, staring downwards, hesitating for a long moment. Happy sensed they were about to say more, and anxiousness crept up inside him.

“… you should take the TV… if you want…” murmured Napstablook at the snail pen.

“No way,” Happy protested, with warm sincerity. “I like watching TV _a lot_ , but I like being with you even more. I’ll just come over all the time, and we’ll watch together.”

Napstablook met his eyes, and first true smile they had worn in days spread across their face. Happy smiled back at them. Then the two siblings turned to the work in front of them, together.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter is late -- I had been hoping to post two chapters at once, but couldn't quite get the second one finished in time -- it should be up in a week or so. The next chapter is going to have a happy storyline, really!

Lying cradled against Hark’s velvety doll chest, Feist’s consciousness skidded between shallow sleep and dazed anxiety. Thinking over and over and over how to tell the story of what had happened, with the human children with the dogs with the Blooks, didn’t lead to any way of telling the story that hurt less. So when the thump of dummy-base hitting wooden floor filtered down through the ceiling/floor dividing the ghosts’ two apartments — meaning Remi was up again, probably meaning Fleet had come home — Feist reached a point where the discomfort of waiting to tell the truth counterbalanced the fear of telling the truth.

“I want to tell everyone at one, at one, at one time,” Feist mumbled at Hark’s stitched-in toes. Hark understood.

When the two entered the top apartment, Flederhoom was there unbinding a stack of take-out containers of ghost dumplings while Remi and Cake looked on.

“Feist! Long time no see. What brings you to town?” Fleet exclaimed.

Feist made no effort to look cheerful this time. Fleet’s welcoming expression dropped, and they looked between the other three adult ghosts in a rush, eyes pinching with concern.

“I’ll explain…” said Feist.

Remi and Fleet shared a look; that was all they needed to set up a plan. “Hey Cake!” Fleet chirruped, picking up a food container with each arm, “Let’s eat our dumplings downstairs and let the others talk a little bit, okay?” Cake followed them out the door — Fleet was thankfully slowed down by their effort to keep the containers steady — and the three other ghosts looked at each other. Waiting. In a minute Fleet’s head emerged in the middle of the floor — they were ready to pop up and down through the ceiling/floor barrier, to follow the conversation and keep a regular watch on the ghost child downstairs.

Now that the moment had come, Feist realized that the whole story was impossible to tell. Nobody outside the gates to Home City — nobody besides the Blooks — knew where Toriel had gone when she had left her home and the King. The more people got the idea that the ruins of Home City might be inhabited by anyone besides froggits and moldsmals, the more danger she was in… her, and Staid, and the other Blooks. New Home City had finally found some new normal after the Dreemurr children’s loss; exposing Toriel could destabilize the whole City, or even the whole Underground.

The significance of that, the responsibility and the weight of the uncertainty of it, paralyzed Feist, standing in the middle of the floor held by three pairs of eyes. But there was a core of the story that was relatively straightforward, and that was fully Feist’s to tell.

“You know about the human children… who were… just caught… down here,” Feist said in a dry rasp, a voice that befitted a mouth lined with cotton.

A little shudder went through the three other ghosts assembled. “Of course!” Fleet interjected, making a mighty effort to keep their voice down, “It’s all anyone’s been talking about lately!”

“It’s stirred up an incredible amount of emotions,” Hark added. “I’ve had a wave of appointments since the Royal notice went out.”

Remi just narrowed their eyes and waited.

“I… met them,” Feist managed.

Hark gasped and padded closer, raising a felt-lined paw to touch Feist’s side. “Did they hurt you?”

Remi shot a glance at Fleet, who ducked under the floor to check on Cake and rose again. “Whoa! Imagine meeting a human! Scary.”

“NO No no… they were…” Feist shivered, searching for the right words. “They weren’t bad. Neither one of them. They were… just children. Even though they were humans.”

“And?” Fleet prompted. Hark tilted their head, button eyes shining with curiosity.

“But but but… I got scared. So I called the Royal Guards. I got them arrested and taken to Asgore.”

Finally Remi reacted, nodding slowly. “You were right to go for help, instead of trying to deal with humans yourself. We all know what happened the last time a human was in the Underground.” Their voice took on a rote quality. “The humans attacked him with everything they had…”

  
Hark picked up the recitation. “He was struck with blow after blow…”

Fleet picked up the narrative, speaking with ease; by now they’d heard the story told and re-told so many times that they were able to enjoy the feeling of taking part in the tradition while ignoring the gruesome meaning of the words.

“Asriel had the power to destroy them all. But...”

The three waited. Feist stared back and forth between their faces, at a loss.

“…Asriel did not fight back,” Remi completed the passage with a practiced note of closure.

Realization washed over Feist like an avalanche. These ghosts, living in the shadow of King Asgore’s palatial home, comfortably settled in his benevolent — or seemingly-benevolent — care… they and the Blooks shared the same story, grew from the same ancestors who had been through the same trials… but somewhere their story, the way they understood their place in the world and others’ places, had diverged from the Blooks’. Or the Blooks were the ones who had splintered away. Either way, it wasn’t just to protect Toriel and Staid that Feist couldn’t them the whole story; _they wouldn’t understand how it had really happened anyway_.

Feist looked blankly at the ceiling, the story that had to be told seeming obscured like a path covered in fog, and charged ahead. “Napstablook and Happstablook met them too. And they saw that… that these children didn’t mean any harm. You know, Napstablook is… Napstablook is so good and kind…” Feist stopped, choked on a sob, couldn’t speak. And then the rest of the story, of _a_ story, came pouring out.

“They wanted to make friends with the humans. They wanted to take care of the humans, because they were so small, and they were so alone, and they were so lost. I just wanted the humans gone. So we fought. A terrible fight. I… I… I lost my temper. I attacked them. I hurt family. So I had to leave.”

The three New Home ghosts lapsed into a solemn hush, lost in imaging how the fight could have gotten so bad, and how agonizing it would be to be separated from their own family like that, or to leave Ghost Town.

Remi mulled over their next words, and spoke with care. “Will we see Napstablook here again?”

Feist paused. “I don’t know… They might guess I’m here. They probably know I’m here. They’re okay. They’re just… angry.” Feist’s head drooped. “Not angry. Disappointed. Shocked. Betrayed.”

Hark’s plush paw hadn’t moved from Feist’s side; now they moved it in slow soothing circles. “It sounds like an awful misunderstanding. But at least the humans are gone now.” Feist didn’t have the strength to correct them, to say that Napstablook had understood everything too well, and that _gone_ didn’t cover where the humans really were.

Remi’s eyes darted back to Fleet, who had gotten wrapped up in the story; Fleet started, and dropped fully into the lower apartment to join Cake.

“You can stay with us,” Remi said, their button eyes full of sympathy. “Whatever happened with the other Blooks, I said this could be your home and I still mean it.” With one last sympathetic look they headed for the stairwell, leaving Hark and Feist alone with two containers of dumplings.

Hark squeezed Feist in a full hug now, their body just tall enough for their shoulder to cup Feist’s chin; and finally Feist relaxed into the embrace. The worst part, the most immediate worst part, was over now; whatever happened later would be handled later.

 

* * * * *

Feist and Hark sat side-by-side on the couch in Hark’s apartment, conversing with Remi; Fleet had taken Cake out for a walk. Hark, wearing their blue-masculine doll body, leaned into Feist, one arm against the couch’s back. Remi stood facing the couch; their straight wooden base was built for standing — unlike Hark’s body’s fully-articulated limbs — and so it was more comfortable for them to stand up than sit. Honestly, it was the same with Feist’s dummy body: sitting properly on the couch meant stiff, creaky bending at the joint where wooden foot met cotton torso; but it also meant being close to Hark.

Flederhoom knocked on the door, and without waiting for an answer, blew through it with a smile. A moment later Cake rolled in like a dust bunny on a draft, low to the ground and breathing heavily.

Remi turned their head to greet their child and their companion. Feist took advantage of the moment to turn to Hark’s neck — how wonderful, for a ghost to have a neck — and plant little kisses on it up and down. Hark shrugged into the kisses, closing their eyes and grinning. Fleet looked up and caught the moment; they zoomed over.

“Awww, you two are so sweet,” they cooed. A mischievous glint lit their eyes. “Hey Cake,” they called, “What do we say when things are too sweet?”

Cake was leaning their forehead against their parent’s side, eyes wide with relief that they’d reached the end of the walk-that-was-more-like-a-race; they lifted their face and answered. “Ew GROSS!”

“Ew! Gross!” Fleet repeated, bouncing with amusement. Hark wrinkled their nose at them, unperturbed, and leaned their head against Feist again.

Remi hopped into the stairwell, Cake clinging on the slope of their side to rest. Fleet began to follow them, but stopped halfway up the stairs and swooped back, face full of mock-concern.

“’Sweet’ is good for friends,” Fleet said in a sly undertone, “But you can’t finish a courtship the right way like that. Out around the city, I’ve heard everything. If you need help thinking up some good nasty lines, just ask.”

Hark jumped directly up out of their body with a scandalized howl, leaving it to slump forward over its legs, and chased Fleet around the ceiling, purple with embarrassment. Fleet laughed back at them in triumph, keeping bare inches ahead.

Feist couldn’t help but laugh at their antics. But the place where Hark had gone felt cold and hollow in their absence. It wouldn’t be long before their courtship began in earnest, and then not too long after that before ghost nature would force Feist to leave. It was a sweet but soul-shearing feeling, wanting what came next but never wanting _now_ to end.

* * * * *

For all Fleet’s saucy taunting and Remi’s polite obliviousness, it only took a few words for them both to realize that it was time to take Cake for an extended visit with a friend across town.

* * * * *

Feist hummed, one melody after another, songs of comfort and optimism. The idea of pregnancy had been frightening — expecting restlessness, volatile moods, compulsively chasing away other ghosts — but instead, Feist had found a sense of deep calm, like making a new family this way wasn’t just life-affirming, but self-affirming. Finding new ways of expressing love, through courtship and now through expecting the child, felt intimate and important; like when Feist found clothes that fit just right.

Feist, Remi and Cake were standing in the public side of Hark’s apartment. Remi and Cake leaned in close. Feist mentally reached inside, exploring an interior space with as much emotion as sensation; found and cradled the foreign growing soul with a tendril of thought, and lifted it through the cotton dummy-body surface, turning it until a tiny pinched-shut face came into view. Cake’s mouth opened in delight.

“See? It’s a baby ghost, like you,” Feist said.

Cake closed their mouth into a pout and narrowed their eyes.

Feist suppressed a chuckle. “What I mean is, it’s a baby ghost, completely unlike you, a big grown-up ghost.”

Appeased, Cake smoothed their features and smiled at the scrunch-faced bud.

“Get yourself ready,” Remi said, “When they start surfacing they start getting their own ideas about what they want. Cake didn’t like being inside my corporeal body. The last week before they abscised they kept butting me in the soul whenever I was in it. I’d try to sleep in my body and wake up on the floor.” Cake looked proud.

Fleet’s voice filtered through from the other side of the sky-blue curtain that divided the halves of Hark’s apartment; it was muffled, directed away from the curtain, chiding with a joking lilt. “Not fair, turning your back on me. How am I supposed to tell if you’re cute or ugly?”

Hark’s voice followed, directed at and through the curtain, with a barely-audible quaver of unease. “Did you say you can see Feist’s bud’s face? I can’t get mine turned around.”

Hark’s voice was grating to Feist, as irritating as a mosquito in a small room; it was to be expected, just part the normal changes Feist was going through. Feist called out, hoping the comfort of the words would outweigh the irritation of the voice. So far Hark had been tolerating Feist’s continued presence in the house surprisingly well. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve always had extra good ectoplasm control. Not seeing them doesn’t mean you’re late; I’m just early.”

“Oh… thanks,” came Hark’s reply, their relief audible.

Remi turned their head, then bustled past the blue curtain with Cake trailing behind. Fleet phased through the opposite way, and descended to peer at Feist’s baby before angling up to look at Feist and extending an arm to motion to the stairwell; Feist followed them out and up to the upper apartment. They were right: if Feist wanted to stay in the house as long as possible, it was better to spend as little time with Hark as possible. Soon even the knowledge that they were in the same house would be too much to bear.

But that day came faster than Feist had expected: the next day. “It’s time,” was all that Fleet had to say, and Feist followed them out into the streets and alleys of Ghost Town, to a ghost household across the city that was prepared to care for a ghost who had romanced themself out of a home — it certainly wasn’t the first time this had happened. There was surprisingly little bitterness in the moment, now that the time had arrived; it was reassuring that the normal sequence of things was clicking into place.

Fleet wasn’t making their usual nonstop stream of chatter, so Feist spoke as the two weaved through the backstreets of New Home. “I’ll send a message to you after I find a new home. Every ghost in the City knows you, right, right right? I can’t come visit you, but you can still come visit me.” They passed corporeal monsters’ houses, the buildings turning their backs to the alleyways, draped with laundry or laden with windowboxes or simply blank. Inside, the baby snuggled against Feist’s body’s stitches.

“Sure.” Fleet’s answer was short, and a concerned tightness lay just behind their kind expression. It was a stressful time, leaving friends, dividing a house that had just barely formed. Feist felt that strain too, and worse, recalling the last events at Blook Acres all over again; if it weren’t for the baby inside wrapping themself in protective good feelings, Feist would have dissociated.

On the doorstep of the strangers’ house where Feist would begin a new life, Feist hugged Fleet between chin and chest and thanked them, and sent good wishes and gratitude back for the other ghosts at the household, and said goodbye.

* * * * *

There was an expected order to these things. The baby grew, and Feist’s sense of unease grew with it. Staying in someone else’s home there was no outlet of planning and re-arranging and organizing, and so Feist stewed and fretted and worried.

The ghosts Feist was staying with offered endless advice: _These feelings are completely normal. Have some tea and stale toast and rest. Here are some puzzles so you can distract yourself. The only way to get through brooding is to relax as best as you can and wait it out._ But none of that stopped Feist’s anxious thoughts: memories of the last few days in the ghosts’ household that didn’t seem to fit together quite right, amorphous thoughts of Hark in pain, and a vague feeling that something important had been missed.

So against tradition, and against better logic, and against the hosts’ strenuous advice, Feist went back to the ghost trio’s household.

Fleet was the first to see Feist approaching, the dummy body brushed and well-cared-for, the bud now sitting on the dummy’s cotton surface and nestled just below Feist’s head, with one eye opened to see the lights of the City go by. Fleet swooped in fast, arms out, like they were shooing away a gawker from something embarrassing. “You’re not supposed to be here,” they hissed. And, “Hark doesn’t want you here.” And that was comforting, because that was the way it should be.

But Feist had come too long a way to turn back now. And so, with Fleet hovering like a defensive mother bird, Feist climbed the familiar steps to the first-level apartment and knocked.

After just a brief wait, Hark opened the door, like usual; in their naked incorporeal form this time, a simple deep ghost eye appearing in the crack between door and frame. Fleet had given up trying to prevent the meeting and had left. Hark’s face jolted, their eyes widening in dismay; and this was comforting too, because that was just as it should be.

And then Hark opened the door wide. Feist took in their form at a glance; the simple, smooth shape of a single adult incorporeal ghost. Hark was looking at Feist too; the familiar tree-shape of the dummy body, gone asymmetrical with the bud cuddled at the shoulder.

Hark spun around, as quickly as if on a pivot, leaving the door open, and flew through their lamplight-speckled apartment past the curtain partition to the room where they kept their assortment of bodies.

Feist stumped after them, and dredged up a voice to ask the terrible question. “What happened to the baby?”

Hark picked up a felt cloth, turned to the Ouija board resting against the wall and buffed at its glass with short strokes. “There was never any baby,” they said. They let their arm droop, and turned to look fully at Feist, expression heavy with confusion and disappointment. “There was nothing in the bud.”


	4. Shyren

It was a good day for Blook Acres: new customers had arrived and were poring over the snail pens with eager, curious, hungry expressions. There were a pair of them: the same type of monster, but Happy wasn’t sure what type… Eels? They were legless and lumpy and scaled, and breathed the air shallowly and rapidly like people used to gills. One of them took the lead in the sales transaction, exchanging polite banter with Happy while Napstablook fetched tins of snails. His eyes were almost hidden under thick ridges but he still managed to show interest and gratitude, and he spoke in a pleasant, buttery low voice. Having no hands, he had cached gold coins in one cheek of his broad, thick-lipped mouth; he maneuvered them out on to the ground with his tongue and gave an apologetic twitch.

His companion set into the tins as soon as they arrived, gnawing off their tabs and slurping at the raw snails inside. He’d downed an entire tin and was starting on the second, as Happy and Napster looked on with a sort of horrified admiration at his ability to eat, when the speaker twisted and made a quiet disapproving burble in his throat. “A little delicacy?” His companion froze in a goofy self-conscious pose, lips sealed around the second tin.

Happy swished his ectoplasmic edge to brush away the concern. “No worries! I can’t imagine a better compliment.”

The companion directed a squint of gratitude at Happy and finished gulping the contents of the second tin. The first, resigned that he’d done what he could to maintain social propriety, stacked the remainder of the tins they’d purchased so that the second could carry them off in his mouth. With final nods of thanks, the two slithered towards the marshes.

The more talkative eel-monster paused just before the two entered the tunnels leading away from Blook Acres, lifting his head from the ground and tilting it in thought; he came sliding back. Napster had carried away the two empty tins already, but Happy had lingered, so the customer flagged his attention and sidled close. “In the next couple of days, you might meet a couple of ladies… Fish-monster-ladies. If you do… could I ask you… would you treat them with extra kindness?”

Happy bobbed his agreement. “Of course. We treat every customer to Blook Acres with top-quality service, but I’ll be sure to give them special attention.”

The eel-monster’s smile squinted his eyes until they practically disappeared. He nodded his thanks, turned and put his head to the mud, and undulated away after his companion.

* * * * *

Just as the eel-monster had said, a few days later two female fish monsters loitered at the bend of the tunnel into Blook Acres. They leaned their long snakelike bodies this-way-and-that, peeking out from under blue diaphanous fins that draped across their faces and floated about their lean shoulders, stealing glances at the Blook’s houses. Both of their heads were adorned with beads of light on long stalks.

Happy rushed to greet them, energized by the novelty, excited at the opportunity to make someone feel welcomed and appreciated. “Welcome to Blook Acres!” he called, damping his voice just a bit to not come across as too aggressive. “We were told to expect you. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

The smaller of the two edged backwards, putting her companion’s body between her and the approaching stranger; the larger drew her body up taller and flicked her fins from her face with a shake of her head. She had hollow, angular eyes and a fearsome mouth full of needle-thin teeth; but for all her jagged frightful looks, her expression was more intimidated than intimidating. With some effort she widened her eyes and smile into a look of welcome. The effect was rather gruesome in the way it split her cadaverous face, but her positive intention was clear. Happy’s heart melted for her. These monsters were misunderstood and expected to be sidelined, he guessed; a ghost could understand that.

Happy made a small bow and invited them into the houses. The larger nodded, and ducked her head as she passed him, her smile warmer and less forced behind the fringe of her fins; her companion followed close behind her.

Happy turned to follow them. And stared. The sight of their backs struck a gong of recognition in his mind: the smooth scaly skin, the undulating movements. He tilted a couple degrees to change his perspective, and recognition hit him: the pointed back-ridges were heavy-browed eyes shut tight, and what had at first appeared to be arms wrapped around their fronts and folded under their chins were the lips that had been speaking and slurping snails a few days ago. These female monsters _were_ the male monsters from before.

It wasn’t unheard-of for a monster to spontaneously change sex. Happy had heard of a family of colorful fish monsters in the capitol whose members did it as a matter of course at a certain time in their lives (and had felt insanely jealous). Growing a new head, though… that was different.

Happy sped to reach the blue house before them, opening the door to beckon them inside. Napstablook trailed after, mouth small with hesitancy over what they feared would be a long and intense social event.

“Can I offer you something to eat?” Happy said to the fish. He picked up a small box from the side table. “I just happened to pick up some sugar cookies in Snowdin.”

The larger fish nudged her companion. She blinked, ducked her head away, and said in a high, pinched whisper, “Oh! No thank you. We don’t really have stomachs right now.”

The larger’s head tilted up in surprise, and the smaller squeaked, letting her fins fall to completely hide her face. “Oh! Sorry! That was weird.”

Napstablook’s tight, nervous expression relaxed at her reaction, gained a soft edge of curiosity and sympathy.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” Happy offered hurriedly, to cover for her embarrassment.

“Um…” the larger fish chewed at her lip with her spiky teeth, “We don’t even need anything, really. Except… magic?”

“Magic! Coming right up,” Happy sang, and bustled out the still-open door, leaving Napstablook behind with the two guests, looking from one to the other with renewed socially-anxious terror.

Happy flew across the grass-specked yards, down to the edges of the water-sausage fields, seeking his target. He found it: a Woshua, dusting grass blades with a scrap of cotton cloth, its bird chirping drowsily on its bucket-edge.

“Hey, Woshua!” Happy sang. “Moist! Spatchcock! Conjugate!”

The little bird hunched on its perch, wings fluttering furiously. It pinned Happy with a sharp beady eye as the bucket spun around with an agonized cry. “Wash u mouth!”

Happy manifested a plate of ectoplasm and stretched it out as a deluge of green-clean magic drops came flying at him, catching the drops apron-style and wrapping them securely. “Thank you!” he trilled, speeding away; Woshua’s inarticulate sputters of protest fell behind him.

Reaching the blue house again, he felt the soft thump of bass thrumming through the walls of the house. The door had been closed; he nudged it open with his back, needing his arms to clutch the packet of green magic to his chest. He found that he had been right to leave Napstablook with the two women.

A simple but catchy instrumental song flowed from Napstablook’s old speakers across the floor. Napstablook hovered near to allow the beats to thrum through their ectoplasm, eyes closed to savor comfortable familiarity of the sound. In the fragile privacy granted by Napstablook’s closed eyes, the two fish-women had come alive, their hunched nervous postures unwinding and loosening to follow the rhythm in a smooth dance, sinuous motions curving perfectly in-time. The smaller one saw Happy come in and stopped, letting her head droop again, but the larger tilted her face towards the ceiling and let her fins flow down her back, looking defiant; defiant of who or what, he didn’t know.

Happy proffered the packet of magic; the two of them stilled their dancing and leaned in. The stalks topping their heads twitched, bulbous ends glowing with an interior light that grew stronger the closer they got to the magic until their stalks seemed topped with luminous gemstones. They reached forward with delicate fins, absorbing the magic through their skin.

When the magic was gone and the fish had leaned away, Happy exclaimed, “Your dancing is simply gorgeous!”

They ducked their heads behind their fins again, and didn’t say a word in response; but he could see both of them wore shy smiles.

“What’s your favorite type of music?” Happy prompted.

The larger nudged the smaller. And when she didn’t speak, nudged her again, until she was practically rocking back and forth; finally the smaller one spoke, her voice a bare timid whisper. “Do you like… Pop?”

Happy gasped, glowing. “I. Love. Pop.” He turned to his sibling. “Napster… could you, please?”

Relieved to have a familiar task to fix their attention on, Napstablook rifled through a box of tapes and pulled out a cassette; it had been compiled in the Capitol one evening several months back, arm perched on the Record button to catch the most popular songs broadcast over the radio that night. They fast-forwarded, played, stopped, fast-forwarded some more, and played. The syrupy tones of a popular love ballad duet poured into the cozy space of the house.

The smaller fish turned her back on the room. For a moment Happy was afraid she’d somehow been offended; but as the recording’s lyrics began he saw her mouth moving, and heard her voice just barely audible under the tones of the song.

Happy knew this song by heart, so he could watch her with full attention and still follow the song’s cues. The duet’s first verse, the woman’s part, drew to a close; the second part, the man’s part, arrived. Normally Happy would sing along as quietly as possible, to avoid hearing how painfully high and thin his voice was compared to male singer’s; but this time he ignored his feelings and belted his verse with full-throated enthusiasm. As he sang, her posture relaxed again; her eyes closed, her head tilted back so her face emerged from her tangle of fins. The bridge came and went; the next verse, the verse the man and the woman sang together, arrived. Happy raised his voice again, coming in slightly early in his anticipation. And this time, the fish woman, she sang. She _sang_. Even still facing the wall, the force of her voice rang out against it and vibrated across the walls and filled the room, and her voice was steady and sultry and hauntingly beautiful.

The verse ended. The song kept rolling on through its outro, but Happy didn’t wait for it to finish; he flew to the fish woman’s side. He couldn’t applaud the way he wanted to, so he just repeated, “Wow. Wow. Wow.” The fish-woman peeked out at him sideways. “That was fantastic!” he exclaimed. “Amazing! What breathtaking talent! You’re a natural!” She ducked her head to hide, but not before he had seen a smile take over her face.

He backed up to look at both fish women. “I don’t think we’ve properly introduced ourselves,” he said, beaming his pleasure at them. “Please call me Happy. This is Napster. And you are…?”

“Shyren,” said the larger one.

“… and you?” Happy prompted, looking at the smaller.

She kept her face hidden, so the larger answered for her. “She’s also Shyren.”

Happy didn’t let his surprise show. Corporeal people often weren’t as practical about names as ghosts were. “Pleased to meet you, Shyren and Shyren.” Napstablook had shut off the music before the next song started; they flew closer, their friendly expression their own way of repeating Happy’s words.

The larger Shyren said, “Pleased to meet you… too,” her voice hesitant but warm. But the smaller kept turned to the wall; a tremble ran through her back.

Napster’s expression wrinkled in concern. Happy asked, “Is she okay?”

“She’s tired,” larger-Shyren said. “We should be going.”

“Oh. We understand,” Happy said, again backed up by a sympathetic expression from Napstablook. “Won’t you come back and visit us again, though?”

Her expression of gratitude as she ushered the smaller one to the door, and the relief on the smaller one’s face as she stole one last look at the two ghosts from under her fins said all that they needed to say.

* * * * *

The Shyrens did come back to visit. And they came back to visit again. And again. Napstablook unfolded their music library, playing well-worn hits and underappreciated gems of songs and, eventually — mumbling pre-emptive apologies for roughness and inadequacy — their own compositions. The Shyrens listened with interest, and then with praise, and finally — rewarding Napster and Happy’s patience and encouragement — with more dancing and singing. At first Shyren-the-smaller refused to sing unless she was hidden under a table or behind the TV, but after much coaxing she was able to sing even if the ghosts were watching. Happy sang with them and for them; as he threw himself into the songs, projecting melodrama and joy and pathos — as well as he could with his thin voice and plain form — the Shyrens’ own confidence blossomed.

After one music session, Happy exited the house to scrounge up green magic and caught a glimpse of a tall off-white shape standing at the shadowy edges of the yard. He nearly went invisible, slammed between dread and hope — it must be Feist, Feist had come back. But when he turned to look, it was Staid.

Staid’s wooden base slapped against the mud as they hopped towards the house, sounding like applause. “I could hear you all through the walls. You sound amazing! Well done. Who was that singing with you?”

Happy greeted them and ushered them into the house and prepared to make introductions; but as soon as Staid saw the guests, they exclaimed, “Oh! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shyren.”

Before Happy had time to wonder how Staid knew their names, Staid was greeting Napstablook and heaping praise on the music they all had been making; Napastablook hid their grin of pride behind their arms and the Shyrens giggled. And then, Staid was inviting them all — amazingly, the invitation extended to the Shyrens — back to Home City. And in a blur of activity, they were all on their way: Staid leading the procession, Napstablook following with portable tape player in hand, and the Shyrens trailing a little behind, side-by-side.

They all hadn’t made it out of the water sausage fields before Happy’s curiosity overtook him. He floated up beside Staid. “The Shyrens have been visiting us for a few weeks. We’ve been having the best time. But… how do you know them?”

Staid had to keep their single eye focused on the path ahead to keep from tripping. They gave a wry smile. “I’m old enough to remember the Underground at the very beginning. When all of us monsters arrived.” Their smile slipped as they remembered that first panicked, blind rush through the miles of darkness. They recovered. “The Shyren were already living down here. Not these Shyren; others. Their parents, or their parents’ parents, maybe.”

That was intriguing; monsters who had always lived in the Underground? But there was another question that burned hotter in Happy’s mind.

“Then maybe you know…” Happy muted his voice so it didn’t carry beyond the two of them. “The first time the Shyrens came to visit Blook Acres… they looked different? I think they were… um… male?”

Staid pursed their lips. “Gossip is rude, Happy. If you want to know something about them, ask them.”

Feeling thoroughly rebuffed, Happy hung back and waited for the Shyrens to catch up, and fell into pace beside them. “Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but… That first time you visited our house, when Shyren and I sang the pop duet together… I think I’d met you before that? But I’m not sure?”

Shyren-the-larger looked unsurprised, but thought a moment before answering. “You met our… husbands.” She chewed on the word, finding it not-quite-right. “Our… other halves?” Shyren-the-smaller peeked at Happy around her.

Happy kept his expression open, but he couldn’t fully hide his confusion. “Uh… I don’t understand.”

She shook a fin over her face. “It will probably sound weird to you. And it’ll take a while to explain. You probably don’t want to hear it.”

“No, no! I’d like nothing better than to listen to you! We still have a long walk ahead of us; I can’t imagine a better way to pass the time,” Happy said. “I’ve met all kinds of monsters, all different. And I’m a _ghost_. Incorporeal. I mean, I’m pretty weird myself.” By this time Napster had noticed them talking and had slid back to listen.

So Shyren-the-larger began. “A long time ago, the Underground was dark. There was the ceiling, and the air below it, and underneath that was the deep water, and all the tunnels full of water, and then there was the chasm. There weren’t a lot of people here then. Just us Shyren. And some little cave animals, up near the surface.”

“And the Tems,” the second Shyren interjected, her voice like a little bell ringing in the damp hollowness of the tunnels.

Happy thought of the chambers near Waterfall where the water was unfathomably deep. Now it was crowded with the biggest aquatic monsters; he imagined all that watery space empty and dark, and shivered. “So… you’re all named Shyren?”

“We _are_ Shyren,” she corrected. “Why have a name when you live all alone?” She turned to look at him. Her gaze didn’t quite focus on him; she didn’t see him so much as the pulses in the air around him, the magic that made up his body. It unnerved Happy; like having his depths plumbed. “That bothers you, doesn’t it? Thinking of having no name? Living alone?” Happy tried to sputter a denial. Her mouth stretched into a snaggletooth grin. “Weird already, huh?” She was teasing, not reproachful. Even so, her voice carried a weight of foreignness that spoke of eons in the boundless dark.

Happy gave a theatrical sigh. “Mea culpa. I’m sorry.”

She turned her face back to the path. “If we’re going to live with monsters from above we have to adapt. We should choose names. We talked about this. But it still doesn’t feel right. I don’t like any names I’ve heard.” She fixed eyes with Shyren-the-smaller, who nodded. “So. You can call her _Shyren_. But me… you can call me Sister. Because… that’s what I’d like to be. Family. Like the monsters from the surface have.” Shyren’s expression peaked into a grateful but slightly uncomfortable smile; she felt she should reject such radical kindness, but didn’t want to.

Happy’s response was hushed in appreciation of what he was seeing. “Ghosts don’t have sisters either.” _Usually_. The Blooks had had a sister in Patience — and a brother in Anders. _Had_. “I’d be honored to have a sister.” He feared the invitation to join their families was too forward; but Sister rewarded him with a warm look.

“And your… husbands?” Happy asked. “Do they have names? … Would they like to be brothers?”

“You’ll have to ask them when you speak to them again,” Sister answered.

Happy glanced down at the Shyrens’ sinuous bodies — at the male Shyren, who were different people after all. Once again, he had thought he’d met another person like him; once again, he’d been mistaken. “Can they hear me now?” he asked.

“They’re… sleeping,” Sister answered, again turning the word over in her mouth before saying it with less-that-certainty that it captured what she wanted to say.

“… oh! That’s why they look like they’re having such a good time,” Napstablook exclaimed.

“Could you tell me more about them?” Happy prompted. “And about the Underground, before all the surface monsters arrived.”

Sister watched the path, her voice measured like she had expected this question and rehearsed for it. “Back then, magic was hidden deep underground, far from the places near the surface where the ceiling is thin and the light comes through and things grow and live. So we Shyren had to live a special way to get enough food and to get enough magic too. We female Shyren would travel a long way, swimming deep down underwater searching for the cracks in the earth where magic came through. Our lanterns guide us to it.” She nodded her head to make the glowing end of her head-stalk bounce. “The males would stay near the bright places, and eat the plants and worms and everything else they could find there. When we found magic, we brought it back. But it’s too hard to carry magic such a long way; so we carry it inside our bodies. And when we and the males come together, we become one person so we can share everything we have; they can have some of our magic, and we can share in what they’ve been eating.”

By now they were skirting Snowdin, weaving between copses of dark trees on the snowy slopes, taking a long way around to avoid the lights and people of the town. Sister continued. “When all the monsters from the Surface came down, the Underground changed. It’s not just that it got full of people; the _ground_ changed. Magic called up magic, and the ley lines rose up. Now there’s magic everywhere.” It was true — you could barely walk a half-hour along the well-traveled paths in the Underground without spotting a shining upwelling of magic. “The Shyren went further underground. Most of us live in the deepest tunnels now. But I didn’t want to hide my whole life. I wanted to try something new.” Happy looked at Shyren; she was watching her Sister with an expression he read as hero-worship.

Sister ended her explanation there. Happy had question after question ping-ponging around in his mind, but he didn’t want to use up her social energy before they had even reached Toriel’s home. He let them all lapse into comfortable silence.

The distance passed, and they reached New Home.

Toriel’s reaction to meeting the Shyren was like Staid’s had been: surprise at meeting these elusive neighbors, pleasure at having been chosen for a visit. And now Happy understood why neither feared exposure by them: the Shyren had never been subjects of Asgore’s kingdom, so they had no motivation to report fugitives to him; they had barely mustered the social courage to approach the amiable and isolated Blooks, so they wouldn’t face temptation to share gossip to other monsters, or to spread secrets.

And there was a new secret waiting for them with Toriel: a secret who stepped forward at Toriel’s encouragement, a secret wearing a dark-blue shirt emblazoned with a star, a secret whose long straight hair was pulled back into a neat bun without a strand out-of-place, a secret who offered her hand to the new visitors before realizing none of them had hands like her and turning her gesture into a hesitant wave.

“Pleased to meet you! My name’s Melody.

* * * * *

Melody picked at the cuticles of one hand with the fingers of the other when her hands weren’t occupied. But if she was anxious at meeting the new strangers, seeing Shyren and her Sister’s toothy gaunt faces, she didn’t let it show in the way she looked at them or spoke to them; she was the picture of proper manners. Toriel watched over her attentively, and she returned the affection with little grateful glances.

Staid was energetic, eager and talkative; a marked contrast from the last time Happy and Napster had seen them. They dropped hints about great timing and talent, getting more and more insistent, until they finally let proud-parent mode overtake them and pronounced that there would be an improvised music-and-song-and-dance performance, there _had_ to be, they wouldn’t be able to relax until it happened.

Happy whined at the request, giving voice for all his timid siblings, old and new, who were too easily embarrassed to even express how embarrassed they were. But his protest was just for show; conversation was already stalling out with so many introverts involved, so it would be good to have a project to focus on.

Melody ran off down the hallway, to the room that was now her bedroom, and returned with pink satiny crescent-shaped shoes in hand and a gauzy skirt pulled over her pants. She sat on the floor removing her socks, warning that she had to get warmed up properly before she could do any dance moves the right way. Napstablook took out their tape-recorder and started winding through the tracks, playing snippets and glancing between those gathered to see which got the biggest reaction. When they hit a song with a driving beat and a sensuously winding treble, Shyren and her sister started to dance, almost in spite of themselves — _maybe actually in spite of themselves_ , Happy thought, _maybe the men are so musical they have to dance even in their sleep_ — just as they had danced that first visit to Blook Acres. Melody saw them and tried to imitate their smooth moves, and failed hilariously, her long straight limbs hitting stiff angles like a canister of sticks being shook together. Happy watched her as she laughed, her self-consciousness thrown aside in the familiar joy of rhythmic movement, and was inspired. He let a wave of motion wind through his ectoplasm, and another, until he was… not so much dancing maybe, but moving, with the weird gracefulness of a scrap of tissue caught in a warm draft. It might not have looked like much, but it felt good.

Napstablook played another song, one with more formal structure, less bassline. Melody, who had stopped wiggling and laughing to catch her breath, got a look of focus. She stepped forward, rose onto the very ends of her toes, looking as weightless as a ghost herself. And then, with a movement so beautiful and sharp that it sliced into Happy’s soul, she swept one long leg behind her and up towards the ceiling, leaning forward with chest and arms forming a soft angled line like a bird in flight. She brought her leg back down and swept her arms up above her head, then down, out from her sides, and executed an exquisite series of twirls.

Happy looked around the room: Staid’s face was aglow; Toriel’s eyes were moist as she smiled; Napstablook bobbed to the music with eyes closed in bliss; Melody’s expression was set in a ferocious focus of precision and art; Shyren and her Sister moved in the music with their faces bared. And for the first time in a long time, he felt deep contentment and joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My go at explaining "Agent" -- this sprite who is paired with Shyren -- http://i.imgur.com/xdhccDH.png -- and also makes an appearance as a separate person on the Mettaton promo-poster official art -- https://78.media.tumblr.com/ba24cf336535728fee77c9cdce684208/tumblr_inline_o0p4otLiMK1qda68o_540.png  
> Theory inspired by the real-life biology of the deep-sea anglerfish -- http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler -- but a leeettle less cynicism and body horror; also inspired by the Caves episode of the Planet Earth series (and the Steven Universe and Star Trek: Voyager I've been watching lately might have been a little influential as well.)


	5. en route

Happy was down among the rushes on the edge of the marshes east of Blook Acres, washing the greasy residue out of a stack of recycled snail-tins. The familiar, repetitive motions needed so little of his attention that he slipped deep into a daydream; his mind’s eye laid phantom thought and sight over his real senses until it was as if he saw hands stretching from his core turning the cans under the water’s cool surface, and felt legs folded under him in the dark gritty mud.

At first he didn’t even register the sloshing sound of someone coming towards him through the reeds. Or he did, but he thought he knew exactly who it would be — a Woshua, spying to make sure Happy was getting the cans really and truly spotless; or an Aaron, always looking for an audience to admire his seemingly-ever-expanding series of washboard abs — and so he ignored the sound, even as it drew up beside him.

Even when he heard his own name whispered in Feist’s voice, he didn’t register who had approached him. Or, he had mistakenly thought he had heard or seen Feist so many times in so many months that the phantasm of recognition had lost its shock value. But finally he turned, a blithe mild look still on his face, and saw Feist’s narrow muzzle and nacreous button-eyes peeking out from behind a clump of water-sausage stems.

“Look at me,” Feist hissed.

Shock washed through Happy, leaving him as breathless and chilled as if he had been pulled under the swamp waters.

“Look at me,” Feist said again. And then, a little bit louder, that familiar third repetition. “Look at me.”

Happy still stared speechless, frozen, bewildered. But he didn’t turn away. He acknowledged that Feist was there.

That small mercy seemed to be better than Feist had hoped for; the prodigal came undone, eyes flooding with thin tears, and babbled, “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

The plaintive tone shook Happy out of his stupor. “Come with me,” he said in a low urgent voice, and turned and slid through the long grasses back towards Blook Acres. Over the whisper of his ectoplasmic form breezing around plants he heard the rustle and slap of Feist’s dummy body following. He kept a careful watch as they crested the slope and turned the rocky tunnel corner and the blue and pink houses came into view, hurrying — Napstablook was away and he didn’t expect to see them, but remembering Napstablook’s grim face when they had banished Feist made him paranoid.

The two reached the pink house without event, entered, shut the door.

Feist looked all around with wide eyes. The house hadn’t changed at all. Or it had, but only in subtle ways. The cushion bed was still there, although the dummy-shaped dent in the middle had been kneaded out of it. The shade on the little lamp and the surface of the low table had gathered a thin film of dust, because Happy still couldn’t be bothered with housekeeping. The effect was simultaneously grounding and disorienting, as the bone-deep memories of living comfortably in this house surfaced and butted up against the knowledge that it was, that it had to be, a foreign place now. Feist scooted forward and touched the edge of the lamp with something like wonder, and then looked upwards sharply, towards the mosaic hidden in the attic.

“I’ve seen it,” Happy said. “Napstablook hasn’t. It’s… really beautiful. Absolutely fantastic. It’s still there.”

Feist’s slump of relief and gratitude was response enough.

“Where have you _been_?” Happy finally asked.

“New Home City.” Feist’s response was clipped.

“Of course! With what’s-their-faces.” Happy was so used to making conversation with anyone and everyone without showing his true feelings that his voice sounded quotidian and normal, and it was weird. He stopped talking. He wanted to ask _Do they know?_ and _Why did you come back now?_ , and some stinging vindictive place in him wanted to say _You know Napstablook has never forgiven you and I don’t think I have either_ , but even the mildest question was rude and hurtful so he didn’t say anything. Silence sat in the middle of the little house and expanded out to engulf them; time was glacial.

“So… How are they doing?” Happy ventured.

Feist’s composure dissolved into a triplet of hiccoughing sobs, body listing and head drooping towards the floor. Happy worried his broodmate would collapse and helped ease Feist onto the cushion. The physical distance between them closed, the emotional distance seemed less daunting. Happy’s compassion for this wayward piece of the family’s shared soul won out, and he embraced the sibling he thought he’d never see again. “Tell me, tell me everything,” he coaxed. Feist’s breath caught and stalled, body stiffening and wincing back from his ectoplasm. “Everything you want to tell,” he said, remembering manners and delicacy, and floated back to give Feist some space.

“Me and Hark…” Feist started, and paused, and looked up into Happy’s face, searchingly, worried.

But Happy wasn’t jealous. He had long since realized that his short-lived pursuit of Hark had had everything to do with his secret feelings about himself and little to do with them. “Good for you,” he said, sincere, “You’d make a good pair.”

The words of encouragement only made grief bloom in Feist’s face. The reaction poured sudden dread into Happy’s soul. “So… you courted?” he asked, hesitant. Feist made an agonizingly slow nod.

“Like… _courted_ -courted.” Again, that slow nod, followed by a third nod.

Happy looked around the room warily, as if he expected a baby ghost to pop out of the floor and shout _Surprise!_ “But… it didn’t work out?”

Feist’s voice was as bitter as chewing dry tea leaves. “It _did_ for me. _Not_ for them.”

“Oh!” Happy’s eyes widened and then crinkled; his sympathy was genuine. “Oh, poor Hark! After all they went through, they’re…” _There was a word ghosts in town used for this, Fleet had told him that one time, if he could just remember_ “…noble?”

“No. no. NO!”  
Happy flinched at the vehemence of Feist’s outburst. But Feist’s anger vanished as soon as it had come, replaced by quiet plaintiveness. “It wasn’t _them_ , it was _me_. Somehow. I just know it.” Sadness turned into bewilderment, into a heated, desperate question. “Happstablook… _What is wrong with us?_ ”

It was a spontaneous cry of frustration and self-recrimination, not an intentional attack, but it hit far too close to Happy’s secret. He grimaced and forced out words, flat and cold as coins. “Speak for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

But Feist was so plainly miserable that his defensive anger melted away. “… And there’s nothing wrong with _you_. There’s an obvious explanation. You… ah… you were so upset by…” _getting kicked out of our family for being short-sighted and a murderer_ “… everything that had just happened that you weren’t able to fully share your soul with another person.” He hadn’t known what he was going to say until a moment after the words were out of his mouth; but it sounded good, it made sense.

Feist looked at the floor with round eyes and hunched shoulders, processing the thought; the desperate grasp at this unforeseen small measure of redemption and release from blame was so achingly evident that Happy’s resentment ebbed into tenderness again. “Where is the child?” he asked, voice soft.

“With them.” The family in New Home.

Happy’s compassion rose up like a wave, cresting into a desire to offer Feist comfort, stability, forgiveness. But that wave inevitably crashed down into chaos as he remembered Napstablook’s cold blank rejection, and Staid’s comfortable ignorance, and delicate earnest Melody hidden in safety.

“And where will you go?” His voice was mild, the tone of his voice could be called kind, but his meaning was clear: _you can’t stay here_.

That meaning wasn’t at all lost on Feist, who stood up with a start. The rejection was expected; yet somehow, that it was said with delicacy after a respite of welcome and kindness made it all the more devastating. “To the Dump. That’s where all the garbage ends up.” The words, the emotion behind them, were so stomach-clenchingly sour that Feist immediately added: “There will be plenty of food. And new things washing down all the time. Good place for a ghost to live.” The hollow positivity convinced neither of them.

The two siblings stood in silence.

And then Happy said, “Stay. For a little while. Napstablook is out hunting music, they won’t be back for a long time yet. Get some rest. You look like an absolute wreck.”

As much as that previous gently-spoken question was really a walled-off rejection, Feist understood Happy well enough to know that this insult was really the most compassionate thing he had said yet. It took no words, only a small softening around the eyes, to accept the invitation.

As Feist slept and rolled over and slept again, re-pressing the dummy-shaped depression into the cushion bit by bit, Happy wandered Blook Acres. But there was nothing new to see, and he couldn’t return to his work down at the waterside now, and starting a new project felt impossible. So eventually Happy returned to the pink house and phased in through the wall.

Feist was half-awake, consciousness drifting in the darkness; the interior ceiling held no magic projections, no wheeling bands of stars, just flat blackness. Happy lay down on the floor, curled up against the cushion bed and its wood-and-cotton occupant, as they had laid side-by-side when they were children.

As he slipped out of consciousness himself, Happy and Feist’s souls rested at the same frequency and Happy shared in Feist’s dream. It was a vision of a stuffed cotton figure, tall and pale, a dummy… no, it had arms and legs, it was an “everyman” doll. But its face wasn’t stitched with the friendly, intelligent face of the mannequins manufactured in New Home City; its eyes were large and blank, located on the sides of its head — this was an animal of prey. As the two of them watched a cloud of white moths materialized, fluttering in from the thick darkness, round wings soft and smothering… the moths drew in to the figure’s face and pressed in, so many, so many, and the figure collapsed to the ground, its agony all the more horrific because it was suffered in silence.

Feist shuddered awake, gasping. Happy lay still, clinging to the edge of the bed for some sense of grounding, of reality outside of the horrible image now burned into both of their minds. Sleep was slow to return, but when it came it came without accompaniment, dreamless.

Eventually Feist was satiated. There wasn’t much to say. Happy packed a bag of ghost food; it wasn’t necessary for nutritional reasons, the Garbage Dump really would provide plenty for a ghost to eat, but he had to give it to Feist anyway: a last act of love and care from him — from the Blook family. They made their goodbyes with awkward half-looks, without words. This time, as Feist left, Happy floated alongside to the border of Blook Acres, and waited there watching until his broodmate was out of sight.


	6. Diary

The Ruins sat still year after year. Up close, the toll of time and lichens and little scurrying feet was evident, in tracks and pits and drifts of dust and streaks of mineral, but from a distance the shapes of the rooftops and the outlines of abandoned homes never changed.

Napstablook and Melody sat together overlooking the City. Napstablook floated atop the thick stone-block wall, looking down in idle curiosity at the way the Underground’s dim, diffuse light flattened out the multi-story drop into a lulling sameness. Melody sat on a folding chair that had been set up for city-gazing; it had been made for Boss monsters and other large folk, and her narrow backside made the old canvas crease sharply downward in the middle. She had kicked off her shoes, and rested her feet directly on the cool purple-gray stone, clenching her toes against it; long thin toes, with knobby knuckles. It had been a long time since she had been able to fit into her pretty pink toe shoes.

“…Do you ever feel that way?” she asked. And Napstablook realized that while they had been enjoying the sound of her mild articulate voice, they hadn’t registered the meaning of anything she’d said. They frowned and looked down at where her hands were folded in her lap. She had little bits of multi-colored cloth wrapped around the tips of her fingers — it looked playful and artistic, but had a purpose. One of the bits of cloth was already frayed, and damp with saliva.

“Stuck,” she clarified. Napstablook bobbed slowly, stopped, and made a whimpering pout of apology.

“You can’t remember anything I just said, can you?” Melody asked. Napstablook’s eyes welled with tears and they made another sad little bob. Melody gave them a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. I feel better now that I’ve said it, anyway. Thank you for listening.” Napstablook smiled in return, and gave their ectoplasm a shiver to shake off the tears that had started in their eyes; the drops hit the top of the wall and sizzled.

Melody rose out of the chair, using her hands for leverage. Ghost and girl walked in comfortable silence along the walkway, down narrow steps and stuffy hallways, back to the warm bright heart of Home.

Toriel, Staid and Happy were seated around Toriel’s sturdy kitchen table, which was littered with crumbs and teacups. The quiet ones’ return was their signal to finish up their conversation, and for the younger Blooks to take their leave, which — after extensive good-byes, about a half-hour, and construction of a massive care package of ghost food — they did.

Napstablook and Happstablook followed the snowy wooded trail in silence. For Napster, silence was normal and refreshing. They felt like a battery sometimes, like the little rechargeable batteries that powered their portable cassette recorder: every exchange of conversation and instance of eye contact was a wire that latched onto the terminals of their soul — it drained their energy, and they needed time away to recover. Happy was different, though — every other person was a battery, and Happy was the one who took energy from them, glowing brighter and brighter with every bit of attention. Usually a visit like the one they’d just made would give Happy a strong charge, and Napster would passively and contentedly let the resulting waves of chatter bear them both all the way home; but today there was silence between them, as dry as the winter air.

People were like logs, Napstablook mused: the fallen logs that studded the misty no-mans-land where the thick evergreen forests and cold air around Snowdin intergraded with the warm wetness of the Waterfall region. They looked fine and smooth on the surface, but turn them over and there was always something unexpected beneath. Happy was like that too — hidden, unexpected — even though they were closer to Napster than anybody else in the world. But at some point, something had changed. Now, more and more often, when Napster got a glimpse of Happy’s hidden side it seemed less like the worms and grubs merrily wriggling and growing and going about their business, and more like the wood itself, gone crumbly and all chewed up.

They reached Blook Acres, still embedded in that cloud of silence, and went into the blue house together. Napster stashed the ghost food as Happy switched on the TV and flipped through channels, and then they both settled in to watch.

The programs and commercials and theme songs ran together. Napster recovered their energy, watched out of interest instead of exhaustion, and then edged into boredom. They looked at Happy, whose eyes were wide and blank, drinking in the images from the TV.

“… do you… maybe… want to go find Shyren and Sister? … make some music?”

“That’s a good idea.” Happy’s voice was hollow, rote. “But not right now.” It gave Napster a shiver. Usually Happy would have leapt at the suggestion.

Napster waited until the next commercial break, and then tried again. “… someone new has moved into Waterfall. A spider told me they’re a family. Of fish. Land fish. I went to look at their house, but it looked scary… I ran away. Maybe… you’ll come along… to meet them… then I could feel braver…?”

“Later.” Happy’s eyes remained fixed and still, flickering with superficial reflected light; little screens.

Napster chewed their lip, concerned. Appealing to Happy’s pride and protectiveness was their surest leverage, and even that had failed. It was time to try something new, to try to fit words to a thought that had been slowly brewing in the back of their head, to be bold… maybe even rude.

“… I… I think… I think I know why you’re unhappy.”

Happy’s eyes snapped sideways to fix on Napster’s face with stunning intensity. Napster’s breath caught. Happy should have protested with cheerful reassurances, should have laughed it off, should have made a terrible pun… but they just stared. And said, in a small strange voice, distant like a bad recording, “… Well?”

Napster winced, regretting the words, unable to take them back and scared to go forward. “… uhm… Usually… ghosts…”

Happy’s face, half-cast in purple and appearing to shift queasily in the blue moving light from the TV screen, turned towards Napster. “Say it,” the words burned like tiny magic bullets.

“… have a collection,” Napster whimpered. “…But you don’t.”

Silence filled the room for one more moment. And then Happy laughed, a genuine and deep laugh, and the tension was broken. And later Napstablook would wonder if they’d had some awful day-mare, if an overdose of the flickering electric light had entranced them until they’d hallucinated, because here was their sibling again, familiar and reassuring and full of life.

“You’re right!” Happy crowed. “You are an absolute genius! Know me better than I know myself, don’t you?” He sprang off the floor, light and energetic. “Well, Doctor Blooky — Docstablook — are you just going to hand out an illegibly-written prescription, or are you going to come with and help me find the remedy?”

Before Napster knew it, the two of them were retracing the path back towards Snowdin, zig-zagging along the path, calling back and forth.

“Echo flowers,” Napster suggested.

“Nuh uh. Why would I want a collection that talks more than me?”

“River stones!”

“They do have their appeal, don’t they? So smooth, so pretty, so refined. I’ll think about it.”

“Froggits!”

“ _Tsk._ Silly! You can’t collect people.”

“Staid collects children,” Napster countered, matter-of-fact.

They weren’t _wrong_ , exactly. But the idea of being part of a _collection_ made Happy’s soul clench. And thinking about _Staid’s children_ whetted the pain of losing Patience and Anders, and the separation from Feist, and dredged up the knowledge of the ghost children Napstablook didn’t even know about, the ones Staid would have had but didn’t. Happy put on a burst of speed to leave his discomfort behind. “Ooh, we’re almost to Snowdin! I bet there’s a kajillion tchotchkes there just waiting to be collected!”

Just inside the town’s limits a bookstore caught their eyes. Its display window was full of sparkling crystal figurines and books with crisp white-edged pages that caught light from the town’s streetlamps and festive colored bulbs and reflected it back outside onto the street’s shining snowbanks. They entered, mindfully opening the door with a little extra oomph so the bell atop the entrance would ring and announce their presence. The shop owner slouched behind the register desk, a monster who split the difference between animal and vegetable, perked orange appendages on the sides of their head that might have been ears and might have been petals, and waved a tendril at them in greeting.

Napster gravitated to the shelves of crystal figurines, letting the scattered specks of prism-filtered light dazzle their eyes. They turned to look at Happy from time to time, with arm pointed and mouth open in a silent exclamation of delight. Happy kept an eye on them, bobbing in appreciation at their suggestions, and devoted the rest of his attention to scanning the shelves of books.

Books made an excellent choice for a collection: easy to carry, easy to store, not too expensive, and yet pricey enough to carry a connotation of status, and a feeling of accomplishment when he could acquire a new one. And so very normal. Traditional — expected, even — given that one of the ancestors of the Blook lineage had been a librarian and historian. But what type of book to collect? The most intelligent, sophisticated way would be to choose books he himself had read and found especially meaningful … but with all the people to socialize with and all the live shows to attend and all the television programs to watch, Happy had never devoted too much of his free time to reading books. Choosing books he would want to read was almost as good, but… frankly, same problem. The written word just didn’t hold his interest in the same way as the performing arts.

He could also fall back on collecting books for their aesthetic value. Many of the books had attractive binding, richly colored or embossed or graced with fancy lettering, but — he flattened his ectoplasm to peek behind one of the shelves, getting as narrow as possible before giving up and half-phasing into the wall behind it — some of the page edges looked even better, gilded or gracefully marbled with multicolor paint.

Napstablook made a chirrup of excitement, and Happy extricated himself from the wall to see what they had found. They were hovering in front of a display of books on a multi-shelved stand set apart from the rest: some medium-to-large and some unusually tiny, some extra-ornately decorated and some completely nondescript.

“Blooks,” said the shop owner, the vowel sound said short like the sound of a drop of water splashing.

_So we’re famous_ , Happy thought, pleased, and politely corrected the pronunciation, “ _Blooks_ ,” the vowel sound said long like a moan, in the proper ghostly dialect.

The shop owner ignored Happy’s word and trundled across the floor to them. They reached between the two ghosts and lifted a book off the shelf, flipping it open with a twist of their tendril. It was hollow inside; the binding and the apparent page edges only served to disguise a little plastic box. “Book-look-alikes,” they explained. “You can hide gold, or a key, or secret notes… or monster candy… or anything small, really. This one over here is a booze flask!”

Napster’s eyes widened in appreciation at the clever metal fake, but Happy recoiled with a suppressed grimace. Seeing something that looked to be one thing on the outside but was really something else on the inside hit too close for comfort.

His eyes wandered away as the plant-person showed off more of their wares, and came to settle on a spot of pink on a small, low shelf across the room. He flew to it and pulled it out: a slim volume, embossed with a simple image of feathers, bound in bright pink leather. A delicate metal latch held it closed. Happy undid the latch and opened the book. It had proper, richly-textured pages, but all free of writing. It was a book that looked like a book and _was_ a book, but a book without a given title, without predetermination of the type of words that would fill its pages. A private, safe book. How appealing.

“Diaries,” the store owner called from across the room.

Happy hugged the little pink diary to his chest and looked at Napster, eyes sparkling. “This is it. This is what I want.”

* * * * *

A pretty diary, blank and fresh and full of possibilities. And a new pen to write in it, a gel pen with smooth, thick pink ink. Money well spent! Happy practically danced through the air on the return from Snowdin to Waterfall.

When they reached the farm, he asked Napster to join him in finishing up some neglected farm chores; Napster’s look of satisfaction and gratitude increased his delight. So much had been gnawing at him recently: chronic worry over Blook Acres’ struggling business; Feist’s secret arrival and short stay and departure, and the nightmare that had lingered behind; a vibe of discontentment that hovered around Melody that Happy could feel but was too afraid to ask about. All that weight had been dragging him down, farther than he had been able to admit until now that it was lifted; to think, all he had needed was a little self-indulgence to feel so much better.

He worked the ground with his old vigor. He complimented Napstablook’s dedication with his old spirit. And when they had finished a satisfying list of tasks and retired for the day, he went to the pink house, and settled into the cushion bed, and picked up the gel pen.

“Dear Diary,” he wrote on the first page, with a flourish that pleased him greatly — so his penmanship wasn’t as rusty as he’d feared, that was satisfying. And now he was ready to write down his private thoughts, to pour his deepest desires onto the diary’s pages.

He stared at the empty space on the page. And stared. And stared.

In the next house over, Napstablook slept. And woke from their sleep, refreshed, invigorated, ready to take on a new day.

The diary page remained blank.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my source for info on book-look-alike blooks: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/30/blook-madness-inside-the-world-of-bogus-books


	7. Undyne

The Dump was crowded. Saturated fragments of furniture and rafts of refuse and clots of plant material piled into patchwork glaciers, their irregular peaks drying in the air while their sprawling underwater bases collected muddy flags of algae that waved in the current. Feist’s expectation hadn’t been wrong: discarded food arrived regularly. The Dump might have supported a small colony of ghosts, if it weren’t for the noise: the current’s constant babbling and the waterfall’s background roar would have drowned out ghosts’ thin voices, complicating the conversation that was central to any ghost colony.

The Dump was also empty. Passers-by often used the high elevated wooden walkways upstream of the falls, their distant footsteps like a percussion section wrapped in felt; but only scavengers and the curious ventured downstream, near the vertigo-inducing edge of the abyss, and even that was a rare occurrence.

The emptiness gave Feist ample time to think, and to remember:

_Hark picked up a felt cloth, turned to the Ouija board resting against the wall and buffed at its glass with short strokes. “There was never any baby,” they said. They let their arm droop, and turned to look fully at Feist, expression heavy with confusion and disappointment. “There was nothing in the bud.”_

_Feist wanted to offer support, and put on a strong calm comforting expression; but it was impossible not to feel a pang of shock, horror, guilt. The bud on Feist’s shoulder cried out at the feeling: a high throaty sound, the sound a person makes that wakes them from an unremembered nightmare._

_In response, outside the building a ghost voice rose in song. The singing voice entered the building and came up the stairs. It was a ghost from the house that had cared for Feist, following the wayward parent, with a traditional song to soothe restless buds; and Fleet was right behind them, pointing the way._

_Remi and Cake came through the door close behind, down from the upper apartment. Remi took in the situation at a glance, and joined in the song with an unsteady tremor in their voice. Feist knew they were thinking of Staid — whom they’d heard so much about but never met — and the circumstances of Staid’s abscission, being born to a traumatized parent: Staid’s scar expanding, becoming debilitating in Remi’s anxious imagination._

_But Staid had been just barely surfacing when their parent had been overcome with grief — much earlier in the process than Feist’s bud, who was nearly full-grown. And Feist had had so much experience in childhood and youth hiding thoughts and feelings that it was possible to emotionally withdraw from what was happening. The bud felt the change and started pulling; the caretaker and Remi guided Feist to lean against the couch and started another song, one of encouragement and welcome._

_The separation was painfully painless. Any step in a child’s growth and move towards independence was supposed to be jubilant, or wrenching, or both at once… but stunned and distant, Feist didn’t feel much of anything._

_The new baby floated near the ground, dazed by the commotion and the ring of faces, befuddled by their sudden freedom of movement. As the other ghosts hung back and watched — Fleet at the ready with arms full of ghost sandwiches — Feist looked around the nurturing circle, weighed it against a future of solitude and uncertainty, and then scooped up the baby and carried them past the blue curtain, where Hark was pretending to inspect their bodies’ stitching, blank-eyed, holding back tears. They turned in shock; and Feist spoke, voice tender but firm, leaving no room for argument._

_“Please. Please. Yours.”_

 

* * * * *

Feist woke out of a thankfully dreamless sleep with a jolt, upending a neatly-folded pile of collected clothes. Outside the little trash-pile den there was a cacophony, a thumping and crashing and splashing, and a series of high-pitched emphatic grunts. What the…

Peeking through a hole in a worn-through wicker chair-back, Feist saw a child-sized blur ducking and clambering and swinging a broken-off chair-leg around like a club. Each swipe took the improvised weapon far to one side — she would have left herself wide open had she been fighting an actual enemy. Her moves were impressive all the same — what she lacked in technical form she made up in sheer energy.

When she paused in her frenzied shadowboxing to drink in air Feist got a clear look. She was a fish-child, one of those two-legged land-going fish. Her vivid red hair — fins? No, hair? No, fins? — was tied into a practical little pigtail at the crown of her head. Her arms and legs were short and still pudgy with childhood.

Feist watched in stillness for a few minutes, until the fish-girl twitched her shoulders and perked up her head and wheeled around. She’d evidently spent more time practicing her warrior-face than her combat skills: her snaggly sharp-toothed grimace split her round-cheeked face like a geode, and her glare was just as rock-hard. Feist winced backwards inadvertently and then rose into the air, spitting. “Hey. Hey! HEY! Who said you could come here and wreck everything?”

The girl yelped deep in her throat, without letting her fierce expression crack. The chair-leg slipped from her fingers and landed with a splash. The trash had come alive to get revenge: that was all her brain could register in the first moment. She was as startled as if a rock in Snowdin had shouted at her. (She had been yelled at by rocks in Snowdin more than once — it was pretty startling.) But she was a child of the Waterfall region, and the reputation Blook Acres had built in the past was stable even if business had dried up and the inhabitants had become reclusive in recent years. She knew that ghosts could possess inanimate objects — so that was it, this worn-down training dummy was possessed by a ghost. She spread her feet and shifted her weight in a swagger; the gesture was surprisingly convincing for her small size. “I’m not wrecking anything. And I can come here if I _want_. It’s the _Dump_. It belongs to everyone!”

Feist alighted on a stack of wooden crates and barked, “You’re wrecking my peace and quiet! And this part of the Dump belongs to _me_!”

“Nuh-uh!” the girl shot back. “Says who?”

“Says my splintery wooden ass that’s sitting here!”

The girl’s eyes lit up at the crude language, and her lips drew further from her jagged teeth. Her limber knees bent slightly, deepening her pose into a defensive crouch. The small movements of her swaggering pose settled into a steady rhythm, silently marking the time signature of a battle chant. “Wanna fight for it?”

Her gaze had a compelling intensity. Feist’s vision swam and began to fill with the tunnel vision of a magical duel, dark and shot through with green after-images of leylines. It wasn’t too late to flee. But what else was Feist going to do today, this timeless, border-less empty day out of a hundred or a thousand continuous empty days alone in the Dump?

“Okay,” Feist said, voice steady and cool.

The fish-girl held her hand out at her side and magic pooled in her palm, congealing and shaping into a luminescent blue throwing-knife.

Feist _tsk_ -ed and gave a sharp head-shake. High energy and low aim accuracy made a terrifying combination. “No. Nope. No way. I’m not risking my life over a few piles of trash. _No magic._ Physical attacks only.”

The girl frowned, but flexed her fingers; the blue magic dissipated. Her eyes scanned the water around her feet, and she bent to sluice her hand through the water; when she rose again she was holding a dented soda-can.

Feist nodded in satisfaction. “And for me…” A row of half-a-dozen miniature ectoplasmic duplicates, little dummy-forms, took shape in the air. The girl’s eyes scanned them with trepidation. “Just the ectoplasm,” Feist explained. “They’ll give you a shiver, but won’t do you any harm.”

She nodded her assent. And the fight was on.

Since she had initiated, duel rules gave Feist the first move. The mini-dummies soared high, congregated into formation, and dropped directly over the fish-girl’s head. She dodged, avoiding them with room to spare. As she moved she whipped her arm around; the soda-can left her hand, tumbling end-over-end and leaving a shining trail of falling water-drops, and plowed through three of the mini-dummies, leaving their ectoplasm to hang in the air and dissipate in a blink.

Feist made a low whistle. “Not bad. But we’ve barely started!”

This time the formation of mini-dummies came from two sides at once, slanting in with a scissor-motion. The fish-girl dodged again, but one of the dummies caught her on the calf. She yelped and put a hand to her leg; the heat of battle made ectoplasm’s touch feel icy cold. She tucked, rolled, came up with a handle-less mug and a chipped ceramic coaster, and took out a whole row of mini-dummies.

The fight continued, turn after turn. Feist’s respect for the fish-girl grew grudgingly: her aim was better than it had seemed at first — must be sharpened by adrenaline triggered by the fight.

But the boost of adrenaline — hormonal determination — took a toll. As the turns cycled on the fish-girl panted and sweated, and her movements lost speed and precision. Feist, on the other hand, felt more lively than in weeks — the movement, the focus, the interaction was invigorating.

“I can spare you at any time. Just saying,” Feist said with a jaunty tone to disguise the fact that the offer was only half-facetious, half out of genuine concern, and mostly a desire to end the fight and have a proper talk with this remarkable child.

The fish-girl gritted her teeth, balling her little fists in the air. “NEVERRRRRRRRRRRR!”

Feist crowed with laughter. And missed her preparing her next attack.

The girl’s hands popped out of the water full of slimy, gooey mud, and lobbed it full at Feist. Direct hit. Feist sputtered and shivered, temporarily blinded by the muck, immobilized through a whole turn.

Finally getting one eye clear, Feist saw that every last mini-dummy had been taken out. The fish girl stood tall, hands on hips, eyes glinting with triumph, grin as wide as her head. “Spare?” she said.

“B…. buh… Best two out of three?” Feist sputtered. It was said with a joking lilt, a certainty that the girl was worn out from the fight, and might even be calm enough now to accept an invitation to sit and talk.

But she rolled her eyes to the cavern ceiling with a manic grin, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Yeah!!! I’ll beat you as many times as it takes!”

Feist met her new challenge with a wild grimace and a show of force, leaping high above the piles of trash and descending hard to thwock wooden base against an upended wooden bedframe — not to frighten her, by now it was clear that would be impossible anyway, but to show her fighting spirit it had the enemy it deserved.

The descent was ill-planned. Feist’s base was slippery with mud. The bedframe was rotted.

Feist slid and fell sideways, striking cotton canvas to the frame as it splintered into jagged, gnashing planks, which Feist plunged through.

There was a gut-wrenching ripping sound. And then nothing.

* * * * *

Rising into consciousness, eyes still closed, Feist registered three physical sensations. One: the pressure of a flat surface, drawn close by gravity. Still embodied, then: good. Two: a dull radiating ache that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Three: a small, soft, cool pressure at the jaw. Odd, but nice.

And then: a sharp jab, too physical to be truly painful but too close to the soul to be comfortable.

Feist looked up and saw the furry, jowly face of a lop-eared rabbit. One of her hands cradled Feist’s head: that was the soft, soothing feeling. Her second hand came into view. It held a needle. The needle’s eye held a taunt length of cotton thread. And the thread led back to… the jab. The throb. Feist’s middle. Torn open.

Awareness rushed back, and Feist pitched and leaned over the side of the table, retching; but nothing came out.

“Easy there. Easy,” said a rough familiar voice… _Gerson’s_.

Feist looked up through squinted, tear-flooded eyes into Gerson’s face: a little more bristly and worn thinner by the years, but with that same familiar look of reassurance and good cheer, as steady as Mount Ebott itself.

“Gave us a right fright there,” Gerson was saying. “But this gal here acted quick.” He tilted his head and the fish-girl came into Feist’s field of vision, her expression still lacquered with confidence but her eyes now rimmed with red as bright as her hair.

“You ain’t been properly introduced yet, have yeh?” Gerson was saying. “Feist, meet Undyne. Brave one, she is. Downright heroic. You’ll be right as ribbons in a minute or two.”

“Bwuh? Huh? Wha?” Feist managed.

“You fell,” Undyne said. Her eyes widened unevenly and her lips peeled back from her crowded teeth. “All your guts fell out. There was cotton everywhere. I thought you were gonna _die_.” Her expression glitched for a second and a half, caught in a rictus as she re-lived the horror she had felt; then her grin returned and widened even more. “But then you didn’t die. It was _awesome_.”

“Undyne picked you on up and carried you all the way t’ my house. And I brought you here to get patched up,” Gerson finished.

Feist relaxed back into the steady, deft hands of the seamstress. Her needle moved in and out, with a little prick each time and a queasy sensation as the string pulled through. It was irritating. It made Feist angry.

“I thought these dummies were quality,” Feist growled. “Supposed to last for years. Decades. Lifetimes!”

The seamstress’ lips narrowed and her eyes got a tightness at the bridge of her nose; Feist understood the sourness well enough, too late to take back the words. _Rabbit lifetimes, sure, short as they are. Not ghost lifetimes._ She spoke, her voice even and mild, if just a little terse. “A dummy like this _will_ last for decades. In the window of a store. Or in a tailor’s backroom. Where it’s kept clean and dry. But this dummy’s been in and out of water. In and out of water _a lot_. The seams were all rotted. They would’ve given way sooner or later, even without the accident. ” Her voice was calm and measured; it wasn’t an accusation, just a fact simply stated.

Undyne sucked a deep breath in through her teeth and sighed, relieved to have that measure of responsibility off her conscience. The room was still as the seamstress’ hands moved in and out a few more times, tied off the string, and stuck the needle into a pincushion.

“If you bring me a spool of spider silk, I can give you a more durable seam,” she said, her voice softer. “They never offer me a reasonable price, the spiders, so I have a hard time keeping it on hand. But if you can get some, I’ll re-do your stitching. For free.”

Feist’s stomach roiled again underneath its orderly bright new stitches. Somebody had paid this time — whether it was Gerson paying out of the produce his gnarled hands could still eke out of his farmlands, or the fish-girl running horrified and guilty to her parents, or the rabbit woman herself using time and supplies she could have used for a paying customer — either way, Feist had no way to pay them back.

Feist rolled to the side, off the table, and stood gingerly. The wooden base was as sturdy as ever, and the stitches held with reassuring firmness. _But for how much longer?_

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Feist said, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“Naw, just glad to see you up on yer feet… er, foot… again,” Gerson spoke for all of them. He curled his hand around Feist’s back, and together the two of them hobbled out of the shop, Undyne right behind.

On the snow-crusted street just outside they paused. Gerson squinted at a streetlight, clenched his jaw, and spoke in a quiet voice. “Hope ye don’t mind me saying, us old soldiers tell things plain, but there’s a silver lining in this. If ye’d already finished yer quest and fused with yer body, y’wouldn’t be walking away. Yeh need to be more careful.” He looked directly at Feist then, trying to look conspiratorial, but concerned tenderness was plainly visible just below the surface. “Come back to my house. Stay a while. Feels like I haven’t seen ye since Asgore were a boy. I don’t get out to Blook Acres like I used to, sure enough, but even so… those siblings of yers, they’ve been playin’ stranger.” The light façade fell. “Did ye ever hear news of Staid? For sure they wouldn’a come back without dropping in on me quick, but… but… this whole Underground ain’t big enough for a person to just disappear.”

It was too much. Too personal, too painful, too many lies to juggle. Feist shied away from the questions as away from a sudden stunningly bright light. “I’m sorry. But… thank you. But… I have to go.”

Gerson didn’t say more. He just reached out and squeezed Undyne’s shoulder as the two of them watched Feist float out of the light of the street, into the murkiness behind the buildings, and disappear.


	8. Slaughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for your patience in waiting for this chapter. And thank you for your patience in waiting for every chapter! And thank you for reading, always.
> 
> This has been the most difficult chapter to write, but to do justice to the emotional impact of Undertale as I felt it I needed to deal with some harrowing canon backstory and in-game events head-on. 
> 
> Please be aware that the Archive Warnings for this story have changed because of the content of this chapter.

Not long after Happstablook bought his first diary, Asgore visited Blook Acres. It was the first time since the Tragedy of the Dreemurr family that Happy had seen him in-person, rather than on the TV screen — Napstablook and Feistablook had delivered to him the final batch of snails that Toriel had pre-purchased, but Happy had stayed home during that trip to the Capitol (that was when he had made his last attempt to find a body).

Asgore was unmistakable even from a distance; the towering, double-doors-broad shape of his frame filled the passage from the farm’s cavern to the main tunnel in a way no other monster could. Searing anxiety shot through Happy; the time had finally come, and Asgore was following some trail of rumor or betrayal or hunch to track down Toriel, to find and kill the new human child that she had kept safely hidden for years.

Happy’s first impulse was to flee, to pretend the farm was deserted. But even Asgore wasn’t so unobservant that he’d fall for that: the snails were fat and docile as they slid back and forth in their few but well-tended pens; a half-used bag of calcium was left slouched against one of the fences, with a spattering of powder showing white and fresh against the muddy aisle where Happy had been sloppy getting it into the pen.

So Happy resolved to meet Asgore head-on. Drifting towards him, his thoughts boiled like a pot of water, bubbling with lies to deflect the impending danger from his family.

Asgore’s clothes were neat and clean and his hair and beard well-groomed, and he greeted Happy’s approach with his familiar goofy smile; but behind the cheerful facade there was something about him that groaned and dragged like the playback of a cassette deck just before it runs out of battery. He looked older than the last time Happy had seen him in-person, and that was disturbing; it was impossible for him to have aged at all since Asriel’s death.

“Welcome to Blook Acres,” Happy said with friendly inflection, exerting hidden white-knuckle intensity to keep his expression mild and welcoming.

“Hello there,” Asgore rumbled, his voice somewhat distant, like the sound of thunderstorms on the Surface filtering down through the dirt. “How is your family?”

There it was. Directly to the point. Deceptively kind. Even as alarm coursed through Happy’s soul he felt a certain thrill that the confrontation had arrived, that fate had chosen him to make this frontlines stand to protect his loved ones.

“They’re well, thank you,” Happy said, plain and polite. No need to give unasked-for information; that would be a sure tip-off that he was lying. No need to lie about where Staid had gone… yet. No need to lie about where Feist had gone… yet. Usually he would have returned the customary question, but there was really no point this time, since the only answer Asgore could reasonably be expected to give him was: dead.

With all these considerations rushing through Happy’s mind, there seemed to be an excessively long silence as Asgore tilted his massive shaggy head in acknowledgement. Then his view lifted from Happy’s face and drifted over to the snail pens. “And your livestock? Also doing well?” His expression was as soft and sweet as a bowl of rice pudding.

 _Devious,_ Happy thought, _Trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Cleverly done, old king._ But even as he thought it, he realized that couldn’t be right. This was Asgore. Years and years of personal history, in the Underground and before it, showed that he couldn’t begin to understand how to be devious; not even enough to protect himself from others’ treachery. If he was persisting in asking polite questions, they were nothing more than that: polite questions.

This was worse than a heated battle. This was anticlimactic.

The realization of safety didn’t leave Happy relieved; it left him livid. A wild urge gripped him to tell Asgore about all they had kept hidden from him, to take revenge against his poor decisions and his pronouncement against humankind by rubbing his lack of understanding right in his placid doughy face.

But before he could get out another word, whether to keep up the charade or to destroy it, Napstablook swooped in. They had spotted this new, but strangely familiar customer and, not being busy, had wandered over to watch Happy’s salesmanship. They couldn’t understand why Happy had suddenly frozen up; this big hairy man radiated goodwill.

As much as Napster had always been intimidated by words gathered in large numbers, they had managed to commit a spiel on snail-farming to memory by secretly setting it to a familiar tune, and the question “How is your livestock?” triggered their recall; they delivered it fluently as the hairy man nodded. Happy hovered to the side and fumed.

Asgore let the talk of minerals and day-length and hibernation wash past him like a breeze, until the monologue spring-boarded from final fattening to packaging the meat.

“How do you do it?” he asked, his voice subdued and his eyes still soft but his words a razor, slicing through Napster’s speech so quickly that Napster forged ahead several more words before they realized they’d been cut off.

Napster blinked. “The snails do the fattening by themselves. We just put the food in their pens.”

“I mean,” a wrinkle appeared in Asgore’s brow. His bare toes — Napster was reminded of daikon radishes and had to bite back a giggle — tightened against the ground, the claws on his toes scoring the mud. His voice dropped in volume again, “the slaughter.”

Happy snapped out of his resentful musing to watch Napster, holding his breath.

It was rather a technical question for a customer to ask, Napster thought… but they’d met enough carnivorous monsters, dragons and bears and cats and alligators, to know that such types often had a strong sense of curiosity… and could sometimes get a little morbid.

The question had a simple enough answer, though. “Boiling water,” they said.

“No, I mean,” Asgore placed each word in front of the other with preoccupied, soft delicacy, like lining up dominos, “Doesn’t it make you feel… sad?”

Napstablook’s eyes went wide and flat with distraction, and they leaned forward as if their thoughts weighted their head. Happy zipped around the side of the pink house, putting it between himself and Asgore’s line of sight. He leaned against its smooth wall to lose his composure and let his feelings wash across his face, gasping as if he’d just flown from Hotland instead of just across the yard. Asgore had already wrecked the whole and the wholeness of Happy’s family as steadily and easily as a caterpillar chewing a leaf into nothingness, his foolishness bringing tragedy to Happy’s adoptive human sister and brother, to his estranged ghost sibling, to longsuffering Staid, to generous Toriel… and now he was going to destroy what little remained of Happy’s livelihood by turning Napster vegetarian.

Back at the pens, Napster blinked at the ground and spoke. “When monsters eat the snails…” they began, working out their words bit by bit, “…it doesn’t make them feel sad. Eating snails makes them feel good.” They paused. Asgore gave a slow nod to encourage them, even though Napster wasn’t looking at him. Napster continued. “…And Toriel, she eats the snails, and it doesn’t make her feel sad…” The present-tense of the statement was lost on Asgore; he heaved a great sigh, eyes gone glassy with memory. “If I don’t kill, they don’t eat,” Napster said, voice tapering off, getting quieter, “… and if they don’t eat, they don’t give us any gold. And if they don’t give us any gold… then we don’t eat.” They lifted their eyes back to Asgore’s face and spoke with the sustained volume of their sales spiel. “I try to be as kind to the snails as I can be. I make sure they have good food and a nice place to live. And then…” Napster’s voice got quiet again, but they managed to hold eye contact with Asgore. “…when I have to kill them, I do it quick... before they know what’s happening… because I don’t want them to be scared.”

Asgore’s eyes crinkled at the corners — where his smile showed genuinely, even if it was tight and subdued on his mouth — and he reached out to give Napster a pat on the back; he kept his movement gentle, but his massive paw still pushed Napster’s weightless form several inches through the air. “I’ll take two tins,” he said.

Happy lingered behind the pink house, moving to stay hidden, as Napster entered the blue house, brought the tins out of the attic, and delivered them to Asgore… as Napster and Asgore exchanged parting pleasantries… as Asgore strode out of Blook Acres in the direction of Snowdin.

As soon as Asgore was swallowed up by the tunnels, Happy zipped over to Napster. Napter’s face was serene… they were actually beaming. But when they saw the severity in Happy’s demeanor the light in their eyes dimmed. “Oh no… did I do something wrong?”

Happy forced a smile. He didn’t want to unload the weight of his emotions onto Napster. “You did great!”

Napster smiled back, their mood giving them extra buoyancy in the air. “More business! What a nice man. I bet he eats a lot. Did you see how big his arms were? Do you think he’s a lumberjack?”

Happy gawped. “Napster… That was Asgore. King Asgore. We used to visit his house all the time.”

Napster blinked — “I thought he looked familiar!” — and then their eyes went light-swallowingly deep and dark. “Oh no… a king… I didn’t curtsy or anything…”

Happy felt the desire for hands particularly strongly, so he would be able to put palms to eyes. He settled for a sigh. “It’s fine, Napster. He liked you fine. You did fine.” He worried that Napster’s recall of who Asgore was and all he had done was only delayed; that at the mention of the word “king” the agonizing knowledge would come rushing back. He braced himself to see Napster upset; he hated seeing Napster upset.

But as the day went on, Napster showed no signs of giving the interaction a second thought, aside from practicing curtsies occasionally between the pens.

* * * * *

Happy’s rotten mood persisted until the next day, when Shyren and Sister dropped by Blook Acres; tall, as they were both paired with their other halves. Feeling the negativity in his energy, Sister suggested that they all visit Home. It turned out to be the perfect remedy.

As they approached the stairs leading up into the old Dreemurr house, a warm wave of scent rolled out to great them: warm butter, and cinnamon, and hot dough. There was a faint _pop_ , felt through the air rather than heard, and Napster turned to see that Sister and her other half had separated; the eel-like male Shyren hurried forward, sniffing the air, as Sister trailed behind and giggled at his enthusiasm. Shyren hung back as the rest of them ascended the stairs; when she emerged on the upper floor she had also separated into two people, her and him.

Toriel’s expression of delight at seeing them all conveyed her love even more strongly than her words of welcome. When she called down the hallway, Melody flung open the door of her room with such excitement that the knob knocked against the wall. She came running, hugged everyone in turn, and ran out to the yard to call in Staid.

Toriel was never unprepared for guests; but by good luck, she had just taken a batch of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. She intentionally turned her back when Melody stole fingerfuls of dripped icing from underneath the cooling rack; but when Melody and the younger ghosts and the two male Shyren stopped casting longing looks at the kitchen and started asking when they could eat, she put on a fake-stern expression that barely hid her smile and said _not yet_ , first they would have to sing — and dance — for their supper. Her rule wasn’t a tit-for-tat transaction as much as a necessity if there was going to be any performing at all, set through experience: more than once, ghosts and girl had gorged themselves on her baked goods and been too full and lethargic to do any performing afterwards.

Melody sat upright at Toriel’s request, eyes sparkling. “I’m learning a new dance!” She stood tall and straight, holding out one arm in a protractor-precise 90-degree angle. Then she started to move, sharp crisp movements, an ever-shifting collection of straight lines that showcased the sophisticated control she had over her limbs. “I… am… a… ro… bot,” she said in a theatrically tinny voice.

It was a clever idea, Happy thought, to repurpose her talent and skill for ballet into a completely different type of dance; humans really were masters of adaptation and self-invention — how inspiring! He was seized with desire to join in her dance; but how could he, with no arms and legs? He sprang to the center of the floor, thinking furiously: What kind of robot could be short and cylinder-shaped?... “Me too!” he chirruped, “I’m a… a… garbage can robot!” He bumped against her side, once, twice, miming stiff and unfeeling movements. “Give me… your garbage… beep boop.” She laughed and threw her arms around him.

As Melody and Happy played, Toriel lugged out the extra speakers Napster had stashed in a closet down the hall and plugged them into the tape recorder they held out. The intro of an Underground pop song chugged out of the speaker. The song was just past the point of being hot, and in the trendier parts of New Home City it would have been cringingly overexposed and passé enough to clear a dance floor, but Toriel and Staid had never heard it before and nodded to the beat in appreciation (Melody had heard it before, just once, as Napster had shared it with her through headphones during their previous visit). Happy knew every beat and flourish by heart, and as Napster played and rewound and played again to cobble together a makeshift extended version, he traded lines back and forth with the two female Shyren, playing with call-and-response and unison and even some rather regrettable lyrical improvisation.

Those with hands clapped along. The male Shyren bobbed and twitched their tails. Sister’s other half kept stealing longing glances back at the kitchen, but Shyren’s other half was enraptured by the performance, his face glowing with admiration. When they finally drew to a finish he gave a whoop and a shout, “You should take it on the road!”

Still on a high from the music, Napster giggled. “What road? What are we taking?”

Shyren shook her fins down over her face. “I… I couldn’t…” her voice peeped out from under her protective barrier. Her other half snaked forward and nuzzled her. “I’ve never seen you as alive as when you’re making music…” he said. “I love it. And if anybody in the Underground could hear you singing, I know they’d fall in love with you too.” Her stalked magical lantern dipped down to brush his broad cheek in return.

Toriel put a hand to her cheek, allowing herself a sentimental grin. Melody wrinkled her nose.

Sister nodded so her lantern bobbed up and down. “Why not give it a try? We do sound good! And if the idea of performing sounds scary, think of it this way: when you’re singing, nobody will expect you to be making conversation at the same time.” Her other half nodded with enthusiastic quickness, but wordlessly: his mouth was full, as he’d stolen a cinnamon bun while everyone else was distracted by the conversation.

Staid’s eye tracked across the room in the middle-distance, as if they were watching the idea unfold in physical space. “In Snowdin, there were performances… weren’t there? Live music at Grillby’s sometimes? In New Home City, aren’t there… venues? Happy, you know what I’m talking about.”

Happy’s soul danced inside him. He’d had a similar thought, many times before — his imagination had conjured audiences, cheers and applause, crowds of fans, countless times, since he had been small — but as he had gotten older he had buried the dream under layer upon layer of certainty of impossibility, hiding it in the same grim inaccessible place he had put his other deepest dream. But if somebody else said it first… if _Staid_ , of all people was saying it… then that had to mean he was free to voice this dream, to run after it…

Shyren’s other half saw the dawning look of delight on Happy’s face and his own face beamed through his craggy, closed features. “You do know where the venues are, don’t you? And you’re good at sales — you could promote the performances!”

 _And have less time to perform…!?_ But this roadblock might be easy enough to overcome. “You had the idea,” Happy said, voice as smooth and sweet as the icing drizzled over Toriel’s cinnamon buns, “You should be the one to do the promotion. …Agent.”

His bumpy brow lifted so high in amazement that his eyes were almost visible. “Wait, no… Me? I don’t have that kind of talent.”

“Are you kidding? You’re a natural!” Happy nudged him. “You approached me and Napster, and you won me over right away; it’d be exactly the same. All you’d need to do is talk about how much you love seeing Shyren perform, like you did now… just remember to throw in a word about me too. About the rest of us, I mean.”

Shyren peeped out from under her fins at him, her gaze soft and steady. He turned his head away, bashful, his grin splitting his face like a geode, a secret seam of sparkling treasure. “Agent…” he repeated to himself.

This was turning out even better than Happy had ever dared to imagine. He looked around the room to Toriel, to Staid, to Sister, and saw hope and encouragement reflected everywhere.

He looked to Napster, and saw concern mapped across his sibling’s face.

This wasn’t entirely unexpected… but at this point, so close to dream becoming reality, there was no way he was going to let Napster’s timidity stand in the way. He just had to believe that Napster trusted him as strongly as Shyren trusted her other h… as much as she trusted Agent. “I’ll be right next to you the whole time,” he coaxed. “You wouldn’t have to talk to anybody you didn’t want to. All you’d have to do would be to make music, just like you’ve been doing, but you’d get to do it even more…”

Napster’s eyes cleared as they returned his look, a well of bright sky-blue in an overcast sky. “…I know. I love it. I love every bit of it.” Their eyes darted away from Happy’s face, and that shadow flitted across again, a cloud blown in front of the sun… And then they aimed an earnest grin down at their tape-recorder, pretending to fiddle with it, and turned away just enough to hide their face.

This withdrawal was normal; Happy understood that Napster was simply overwhelmed, and they would engage again in a few minutes when they had had a chance to process the new ideas, the strong emotions that were filling the room. But what had that moment of darkness been all about?

Happy retraced the direction of Napster’s look, and saw Melody. She was smiling, fingers steepled together in a gesture of delight. But she was a performer, like Happy was a performer, and he knew that expression well. She may well have been glad _for them_ , but she wasn’t really glad.

Happy looked away again, flew to Agent, his brain buzzing with plans for future performances. Whatever was happening with Melody, Toriel and Staid knew her better than he did; they would take care of her. One performer didn’t spoil another’s act.

* * * * *

The last drips of icing had been wiped away, and the table-top was spotless and shining. The dishes had all been washed, toweled off, and put away; the baking pan rested by the sink, upended, to dry. Toriel and Melody were arguing.

They’d had the same argument so many times over the last several months that their words had worn paths through the air that could be felt even when nobody was speaking. Melody wanted to see the rest of the Underground. Even just a part of the rest of the Underground. Anything at all besides the Ruins. Toriel refused. There was one topic that their current fight never touched, though: Asgore. Melody had once argued for approaching him, just talking to him honestly, ending their reliance on secrets. Toriel had taken ill after that argument, a chronic pain in her side that had eased when she worked and dogged her when she tried to relax. Melody had not suggested meeting with Asgore since.

Staid was away, run out of the house on some hasty and inessential errand. When Melody had been smaller and she’d first started to become upset at the narrow decrepit corridors of the Ruins, they had distracted her and comforted her, and succeeded. But as much as Melody tried to follow the rules of life in the Ruins, the walls inexorably closed in on her. Her longing for freedom and her agitation at being denied became too upsetting — and Staid also felt guilty, being the only member of their family who could still leave — so Staid did as much as they could take, and trusted in Toriel for the rest.

The fight had rolled from the kitchen and through the dining room as Toriel had tidied this and that with busy hands, refusing Melody’s queries again and again, quiet but implacable. Melody heard her own voice going loud and shrill, and hated it, hated the way it filled the small rooms that used to feel so cozy, but felt powerless to stop it. She could control her words, she could control her volume, or she could stop her fingers from picking at her clothes, at the furniture, at her skin and hair, but to do all at once felt beyond her strength.

And then she managed it, falling silent, her hands lowering to hang at her sides… but now her feet started moving instead, taking her down the stairs, down the long hallway, harsh compulsive steps whose impact on the stone floor echoed against the walls. Toriel chased after her, and when words weren’t enough to stop her child’s march, she reached out and caught the back of her sleeve.

Melody turned, and without thinking brought her hand around, slapping Toriel’s hand away. The strike barely made a sound as it connected; it shouldn’t have hurt any more than an open-handed pat on the flank of a horse. But Toriel snatched her hand away with a yelp, her fingers gone numb and stinging. She reached out with her other hand, aim gone imprecise, taking a great handful of the back of Melody’s shirt, her claws grazing skin through the fabric in her haste. Melody twisted and pushed back at her. Even though Toriel was easily twice her size, and the blow was indirect and unplanned, she staggered back, wincing and breathing heavily, coming to rest with one hand against the wall. The other hand she raised in the air in front of her, and the flame that leapt from her fingertips cast vertiginous moving bands of light and dark through the close tunnel. Her eyes fixed on a point just down the tunnel from Melody, and narrowed, squinted shut in a blink of concentration, and in that gesture she revealed what she was thinking of doing.

All Melody wanted to do was to make her stop. To distract her. She had enough presence of mind to aim for Toriel’s sternum, where she could get enough leverage to push Toriel’s much greater bulk back against the wall; but as she rushed forward, her years of frustration, her fear, her need to get _out, up, through,_ electrified her movement. Melody struck her with both hands, palms open, just between Toriel’s breasts.

Her hands kept going. Hit the wall.

It was like stepping through a rotted log, sinking into soft cottony debris. And she had blinked as she had pushed forward, so she hadn’t even seen Toriel’s face in her last moments. One moment the sturdy woman was there, and the next there was nothing, but… how to even process it… a cloud of smoke, a drift of old leaves, a bowl of flour. Pain ringing through her arms from the shock of impact against hard stone. And a luminescent white shape that hung in the air, pointed end up, giving off a light so intense that it caused synesthesia, registering as a keening cry. And then that was gone too.

Melody stared at her empty hands, breath wheezing in her throat, shocked beyond words and beyond tears. The last two seconds played through her body’s muscle-memory, over and over and over.

And then her feet were moving again. Without her directing them, without her feeling them, they carried her down the dark tunnel, through the regal door, into the darkness beyond.

Wet crunching: trampled snow underfoot. And more snow drifting down from high above, cold flakes landing on her head and brushing past her cheeks: a sensation she distantly remembered from times _before_ , from times _above_.

Under a tree, in a cozy bivouac under a steeple of snow-laden pine branches, a retriever-dog Guard lifted his head, hearing the sound of footsteps. Too quick and light to be a bear; too steady and heavy to be a rabbit… no simultaneous slither of a dragging tail… a faun? Like a faun, but not any of the fauns from Snowdin, he knew the sounds of their steps…

“Go fish,” said his companion. He looked from his hand to the drawpile, and reached out, and frowned at the new card. Whoever it was, they sounded like they knew where they were going, and like they were in a hurry. Stopping them for questioning would be rude.

Melody walked in a straight line; her feet carried her off the path, down a hill, through a tangle of brush, their bare thorny branches leaving scratches on her arms and legs that she did not feel. On the hillside high above there was a glow, reflected on the undersides of the condensation clouds that flocked under this part of the cave’s ceiling. She avoided the lights. Kept going. The trees thinned; the air became warmer, wetter; a fog descended, blanketed the earth, lifted. The ground went soft and springy, dotted with miniscule green plants.

Suddenly, a familiar sight: a cluster of Moldsmal. But these were shiny and the juicy pink of a strawberry candy; not like the green-gummy Moldsmal gone matte in the dry dust of the ruins. These Moldsmal inched towards her, undulating — a sinuous, sensual movement, like the way the Shyren had danced to the pop song… had that been today? Only a few hours ago? It felt like lifetimes in the past.

“I can’t…” Melody said, her voice rough and dry. They kept coming, inching closer, inviting her to their dance. “I can’t!” she wailed — can’t dance like that, have never been able to dance like that, will likely never dance again…

One of them shot upwards, becoming a tower as tall as her head, a tree of stacked goo. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she stood, exhausted, petrified. The goo enveloped her, clammy and numbing, oozing around her waist, around her neck, under her armpits, taking her breath away…

*

…Melody gasped and opened her eyes. Purple. Familiar, cute little lavender bricks, stacked in tidy order, rising up above her in a wall, and beyond that the cavern ceiling. The cavern ceiling above Toriel’s house.

And Toriel’s voice, calling her name. “Melody? Ah, there you are!”

Melody sat up, feeling her body whole again; the suffocating goo was gone, the numbness from the snow was gone, the myriad scratches and bruises were gone.

And there was Toriel, whole, beautiful, with her unfailing expression of kindness. When she saw Melody’s face her eyes tightened with worry. “Little one… What is wrong?”

Melody scrambled to her feet, ran to Toriel’s open arms and fell in, leaning into her reliable strength, into the softness of her furry arms and worn-flimsy apron, into her scent of warm hearth and clean cotton.

Had it been a nightmare? But it had been so vivid, so tangible, and it filled her memory so strongly… And then she followed Toriel inside, and saw the table set, the forks and spoons just where she had placed them, and dishes of vegetables and rolls and a golden-brown savory pie set on a trivet in the center. Melody already knew how that pie would taste. This was yesterday’s supper.

The present solid reality of Toriel began to ease the horror of having watched her die. And the memory of those vast woods, of the sensation of falling snow, stayed vivid, grew an irresistible tang of nostalgia. The journey itself hadn’t been too difficult; she had gotten a long way. If she walked with care, if she mollified the pink Moldsmal by petting them the way the ruins Moldsmal liked to be petted, she could get even farther… Maybe even all the way to Asgore, finally break through all the secrets and lies and make up her own mind about him herself.

And when the ghost siblings and the Shyren came to visit, when they put on their performance, when they hatched the idea that would let them travel the Underground, that would let them see new sights and hear new sounds and make new friends, her mind was filled with the memory of the regal door marking the end of the ruins, opening. In the cheery bustle of new ideas Napster looked at her, and she gave them a genuine smile. She had made up her mind.

* * * * *

Asgore waited in his throne room, soaking in a rare beam of sunlight. Golden flowers surrounded him, drinking in the fresh air that came through the gaps in the ceiling. A little bird had told him that the human was approaching, giving him enough time to don his royal purple delta rune tunic — some lingering sense of formality, from a long time ago when he had hosted visiting dignitaries and spoke with rulers of other kingdoms, compelled him to dress up. But he had left his armor shut away in the castle. He wouldn’t bring any battle gear to meet this human. This time was not going to be like the last time. This time was going to be better.

Since the little bird had left him, he was alone in the throne room with just three ghosts keeping him company (three hauntings, he corrected himself: calling bad memories “ghosts” was rude to ghosts.) One was Chairiel, the empty throne slouched under a white cloth. The second was the field of flowers itself: as cheery as their bright yellow faces were today, a part of him still never stopped remembering the room before their arrival, the trimmed-grass lawn neat and bare and pure, and then the sight of the green blades smattered with dust. The third was only a memory, standing on top of one of the columns lining the throne room, staring with dark, accusatory eyes in a heart-shaped face.

When the previous two human children had been brought to him, his actions had been dictated by honor. No matter what had been done to him in the past, he had to give every opponent a fair chance. And so he had nurtured the upwellings of magic around his home, to provide plenty of places for healing in preparation for battle. When the two children had been brought to him, he had explained what was going to happen deliberately and clearly to them, as the older girl wrapped her arms around the younger boy, whether attempting to comfort him or holding him back. Asgore had even eschewed his powerful flame magic as a weapon, and chose his trident instead: his tells were atrociously obvious when he used the weapon, Gerson had always told him. Altogether, it should have given the human children a fighting chance.

None of that mattered. As soon as the battle began, the boy-child made a wild charge. As Asgore’s weapon flashed with blue magic, the child pressed forward, his momentum forcing him against the blades; and then the weapon had switched to orange as he staggered, stopped, so that it sliced into him again — not into his flesh, but through his body, striking his soul. He ran forward and struck Asgore, a valiant blow that had genuinely hurt — Asgore had intentionally neglected to heal himself from the wound afterwards, wearing the bruise as a reminder as it had gone purple and greenish and finally faded away. But as strong as his will was, he was so very small, and Asgore was so large. It was only three turns, maybe four — it blurred together in Asgore’s memory — before he slumped to the ground, his soul rising above his body like the moon rising above the horizon.

The soul containers had been prepared by the Royal Scientist long ago for this moment. Asgore had cupped the orange fluttering shape in his hands, as he would cup the little butterflies that sometimes lost their way into his throne room from the surface. He would release the butterflies at the gaps in the ceiling, wishing for them to find long, good lives on the surface; but this soul he released into the soul container, where it sat and ceased moving, went dormant, to rest and wait until who-knew-when.

The girl had fled while he had been occupied with preserving the boy’s orange soul. Asgore didn’t have to track her far: adrenaline had given her strength and her fingers had found cracks in the masonry and now she was on top of a column in the throne room, staring down at him.

She waited. He waited. All things being equal, she might have even waited him out; but he was standing in soft dirt and greenery, and she was perched on a narrow, hard stone ledge. In the end, despair drained her strength as thoroughly as any blow from Asgore’s trident. Finally, she had fallen from the column into his waiting arms… and her soul had gone into a waiting soul container.

It wouldn’t be like that with this new human. It would be better this time.

She finally entered the throne room, escorted between two Royal Guards. They took their hands from her arms, leaving her standing, swaying slightly on her feet, in front of Asgore. She looked at him silently. He searched for something to say.

“Howdy!” He intended his greeting to be enthusiastic, but his voice cracked.

The simple word broke her composure; her eyes climbed from his clawed bare feet past his barrel chest to his curving great horns, and her hands flew to her mouth. Her cuticles had gone rough from snow and wet and heat in quick succession, and from manual puzzles with sharp edges — Asgore knew the terrain of that journey well — and from being snagged on sticks as she’d tried to distract the dog guards — that part he’d heard from the little bird. Compulsively, she began gnawing.

Asgore swept forward, knelt so they were eye-to-eye, and took her hands in his. “Little one, no. Please don’t do that.”

His hands were like Toriel’s: warm and soft, like kid leather on the palms, callused fingers from a lifetime of acts of caring. Melody closed her eyes and took in his scent; that same clean cotton fragrance, something warm underlying like the scent of straw, but where Toriel carried the buttery scent of baking with her, Asgore blended in with this room, with the hint of fresh air and the sharp scent of green growing things. Despite herself, despite everything she had heard about him on the walk over, and everything that she had heard and pointedly _not_ heard about him from Toriel and Staid, Melody leaned in against him.

“Oh. Poor dear… You’ve come such a long way. Let me get you some tea,” Asgore said, and as she heard his words she also felt the rumble of his voice on her cheek. He stood, still gently holding one of her hands, and led her back through the throne room’s door where she had come. “You’ll feel better in no time,” he promised, as they walked down a secret flight of steps, bypassing the cathedral-like entrance hall through which the dogs had herded her on the way in.

The house they reached was just like Toriel’s house, only newer, not so lived-in. In the center of the dining room table a single golden flower stood in a squat clay pot. The tea was perfectly hot, steeped to a sunny-blond color and sweetened with honey and lemons. In some recent memory Melody’s throat had been raw from screaming and crying; now it was just dry from talking to so, so many people, but she was still grateful to have the warm tea to soothe it. And the scones that Asgore offered her: they were obviously store-bought, too uniform in shape, made with an eye towards efficiency rather than nurturing… but they were still very good.

When she had finished her snack, Asgore set down his own cup and said, “Come with me. I’d like to show you something.”

In the same way Home back in the Ruins was close to a high wall that offered a vista of the old crumbling city, so New Home had a high wall that looked out on New Home City. Many times, Melody had looked out on the Ruins and imagined them as they must have once looked, full of life; but her imagination had not begun to prepare her for the reality of a living city. Lights stretched out in every direction, twinkling bewitchingly, and in the closer streets there were hints of movement, bursts of color, echoes of industrious sound. She gazed, awestruck, and Asgore looked out over it at the same time, gaining fresh appreciation for its beauty from her reaction.

“These are my people,” he said, to her and to himself. “I love them. In a way, they’re all like my children.” He looked at her then, his eyes deep, wet at the corners. “I did have children of my own, once. Did you know that?”

Melody looked up into his soft, sad face and felt a pulse of pity. But she said nothing, and looked out over the city again. She wanted to tell him all about her life with Toriel — he had shown her nothing but kindness, and maybe she could say something to put them on the road to reconciliation — but it was still too soon.

They rested there, watching a sort of artificial evening creep over the city, as the homes and businesses close in to the castle began to shut off their lights, and then those farther out, a ring of quietude and rest spreading outward.

Growing fatigued, Melody thought of the house she had seen earlier, the one that was just like Toriel’s but not. Did it have a room just like the room she had been sleeping in? Did it also have stuffed animals, and chests of clothes? Asgore hadn’t made any more offers to her since the tea, and the gift of the city view. She might have to ask.

But as they entered the house together, he headed for the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, stooped to look inside. Maybe he was about to prepare supper? That would be good. But she caught a glimpse inside as he opened the refrigerator door, and it looked pretty bare.

Asgore closed the refrigerator and turned to her. He looked like he was about to say something, but then he just swallowed, and smiled. He put a hand out, stroked her hair with his fingers. He rested his huge palm gently on the top of her head.

His fingers tightened in one movement. No tells this time. He twisted. Sharp. Crack.

The soul container had been in the pantry. One of the cabinets was filled with the flour and sugar and spices he sometimes used to try to recreate the dishes he had loved so much and could no longer get; but the other cabinet had been empty, so there had been plenty of room.

He carried the soul container out of the kitchen, past the dining room table with its single golden flower, into the living room with its cold hearth and its shelf of books with stiff spines, and he laid it in the center of the floor. He would have to take it to the barrier room to be held with the others… but not now... his legs went weak under him, and he sat, looking at it. The dark blue soul inside rested. One might even imagine it looked peaceful.

It hadn’t been any better. If anything, it was worse.

Four more to go.


	9. Tryouts

Thoughts echoed in the Dump. Sounds were often drowned out by rushing water, swallowed in eddies, muffled by soft rotted garbage, or lost among mazes of ancient rusting appliances; but thoughts seemed to hover on top of the water with the mist, collecting with the clouds, becoming saturated and heavy under the high stone ceiling. If the constant dripping of water didn’t drive a person mad, the resonating thoughts would.

Feist scrounged the Dump endlessly, for food, for clothes, for anything to do.

The first dreaded symptoms were born out of sheer paranoia and could be dismissed. Feist’s cloth skin wasn’t really going mottled with mildew; that was a trick of the light. The seams weren’t stretching and warping; that was the ordinary give and take that made cotton so comfortable. There were no devouring moths in the Dump: that was just the same old nightmare. But as time wore on, it became undeniable that Feist’s body was far more mortal than Feist.

Thoughts like these could have led to despair, and would have when Feist was younger… but now, after having had a taste of what it would be like to be corporeal, they had an opposite reaction. When all good possibilities seemed out of reach, Feist started to dream about the impossible.

_The Surface. Sunlight. Warm wind that left cloth and cotton stuffing dry and fresh. Room to move. Room to travel._

_New opportunities. A new society. New clothes? New stores! Looking in the windows of new stores at new fashion!! Wearing new fashion? Standing in the window of a store, wearing new fashion!!!_

But barring a miracle, nobody Underground would ever see the Surface. Feist’s high, wild dreams precipitated back down to earth with the rain… but in their trip through the clouds, a new dream had taken shape. A body. Not just a tool made for someone else and repurposed; a personal, personalized body. With personality. One that was strong and flexible and adaptable. One that expressed the soul inside instead of obscuring it. A body to fuse with. The dream grew and took on dimension and weight, as if the dream itself were becoming corporeal.

What stood in the way of realizing this dream? The curiosity or censure of other ghosts? After all that had happened, Feist was beyond worrying about what other ghosts thought. The impossibility of the body itself? The dummy body wasn’t bad, it was just insufficient, lacking in some way… and that could be figured out, with a little room to experiment. New Home City, and even Snowdin, was full of artisans who could work wonders in textile.

It was cost. Cloth cost gold, wood and thread and buttons cost gold, catching the ears and the hands of skilled artisans for long enough to build something of worth took huge amounts of gold. Waterfall, as a region, lacked gold. The ghosts of Blook Acres had little gold. Feist, in exile, had none.

But everybody in Waterfall knew there was one sure way in the Underground to get gold. Lots of gold, enough to cover every need. It wasn’t far away. It was a long-shot, and it agitated Feist’s bad memories until negative feelings floated to the top like thick sludgy foam, and it was wood-petrifyingly frightening. But it was a chance.

* * * * *

Snow had been packed and pushed to form a smooth arena, circled by sentinel pine trees, circled by chattering monsters. To one side stood the reason for the gathering — Feist could see metallic flashes from his armor between the trees whenever he moved: a royal soldier, a dog in full regalia for effect. Here on the outskirts of Snowdin, all the way from New Home City, to recruit.

The tryouts had been underway for a while. Introductions had been made, questions had been asked and answered; Feist had missed all of that, but had arrived in time to see some of the shows of strength that followed, had heard growls and snarls and seen snow fly as the aspirants grappled with training dummies and with each other… during one sparring session, had seen loosened feathers explode into the air and drift to the ground. Everyone’s attention was drawn inwards, towards the center of the action; and if anyone had happened to notice Feist standing in the woods, they must have assumed that the guards had brought along a spare training dummy, just in case, and then found they had no need for it.

Feist stood, unable to move forward, drawing hard on force of will just to keep from turning and leaving. It had been difficult enough, days ago, to approach a shopkeeper in Snowdin to ask about the possibility of guard tryouts; the only way Feist had been able to achieve that was by pretending that learning the date _was it_ , was _success_ , was the end of the effort, instead of just the first step towards _this_.

Without taking this last step forward, it really would be the end. _Get it together! Put yourself out there! You’ve done it before! This dog isn’t any scarier than those hound-detectives you talked to before. And all the dogs of Snowdin can choke on a rock. Rocks. One big rock, all of them, all at the same time. The one from New Home is the only one that matters. Go. Go! GO!_ And so, thoughts firmly clutching body for courage, Feist moved into the circle.

The Snowdin residents’ reaction was fully expected. The hush, the sharp eyes, the dogs’ noses twitching. The guard from New Home City turned too, and Feist got a good look at him for the first time — he had the straight pointed muzzle, the narrow hips, the thick tawny fur and glossy black mask and cape markings characteristic of one of the dogs’ most distinguished and militarily-minded families, and a perfect beauty mark on each cheek. _Probably got his position by looks alone._ There was a silent, still moment.

The shout of greeting that followed was not expected. “Yo! YO!” The source sat on a felled log next to a shockingly fluffy white dog whom Feist recognized as Snowdin local Officer Pom Pom. It was _her_ , the fish girl from the Dump… Undyne. She had that unmistakable grin, that intensity in her eyes, the shock of red on her head — much longer now; and her arms and legs were longer than the last time Feist had seen her. She apparently didn’t remember Feist’s name, but she didn’t let that get in the way of her greeting. “It’s YOU! But with your guts on the inside this time — awesome!”

Feist tried to speak through a mouth so dry it felt sealed closed with Velcro. Gulped, tried again. “H… hey. Hey. Hey!” Pause. “Are you trying out for the Guard?”

“I was! But now I’m in kiddie jail!” Undyne crowed. The locals either side of her looked out into the treetops in that Snowdin I’m-being-polite-but-secretly-judging-you sort of way.

“You’re on time-out. And on probation until the next round of tryouts,” clarified the examining officer, in a voice as trim and handsome as his face.

“I took initiative,” Undyne said, leaning back and folding her arms.

“You attacked a guard member. Without warning. In a hotel. Four hours before tryouts started.”

“Never saw me coming,” Undyne said with a sly smug grin, and snorted.

Feist imagined the local dogs’ self-satisfied mugs shaken with surprise, and suppressed a chortle, feeling marginally braver.

“Me… Me too. I’m here to try out,” Feist said, as quickly as possible, just to get the words out.

A current of surprise went around the circle of the crowd, felt rather than heard or seen. Eyes snapped to Feist. Pom Pom giggled, pink tongue poking out just a bit from their small blunt muzzle.

“Hey!” The Royal Guard barked, directing a stern look around the circle. “Don’t you know our history?” His tone was even but his meaning was pointed; Pom Pom took their tongue back into their mouth and sat up straighter. “Plenty of ghosts have been guards.”

 _Was this going to be a clumsy regurgitation of family history through someone else’s secondhand memories?_ But the Guard’s voice was warm, if slightly formal, and he regarded Feist with genuine interest as he spoke. “Before the Underground, there was a special company of ghosts that served under Asgore. Got intelligence from spying on the humans that the monsters couldn’t have gotten any other way.”

 _Hey._ This guy actually knew his stuff. Undyne’s eyes glowed; she sat up straighter, impressed with his academic knowledge. Feist straightened up as well, feeling the looks from those around the circle shift from disregard to interest. _Maybe I judged him too quickly._

“Ghosts have all sorts of useful abilities,” he continued, “They can travel through walls. They can turn invisible. They can possess all kinds of different objects.”

Feist’s soul pitched and dropped, as if sliding off the edge of the waterfall’s Abyss. “I… uh… can’t.” It was vulnerable enough, standing in front of all these dogs and inviting their judgement; being body-less in front of them would be unbearable. “I can’t do those things. I’m… uh… corporeal.”

The Officer turned his head, slowly, to look at Feist more directly. “So… What can you offer the Guards?”

“I’m a training dummy.” The Guard said nothing, but his eyes flicked in the direction of the other, inanimate dummies. “I can fly,” Feist offered, voice cracking.

The bird-monster, looking strong and well-clad despite having left handfuls of feathers on the arena floor, snickered. And somewhere among the crowd, behind Feist’s back, just on the edge of hearing, a voice said, “Big deal. I can make a dummy fly.”

Cold fear throbbed inside Feist’s skin. _This was a mistake._ “I can… I can… I can…” Feist sputtered, looking at the ground. The crowd receded from view as a sort of dim visual miasma crept in. Shame rose up like bile and became choking frustration, bled into directionless anger. Acidic tears welled up, threatening to further damage Feist’s already-threadbare dummy body. Breath came shallow and ragged.

Feist took the feelings, the sensations, the thoughts, and let them rush in like the tide… Then bundled it all together and let it explode _out_.

The dummy body’s seams stretched and groaned. Acidic tears built and spilled. Feist sobbed, breaths that went deep and jagged and turned into hyperventilation. There was a sound of creaking canvas, and then a gut-wrenching ripping sound, as Feist’s seams stretched and tore. The halves of Feist’s body gaped, the ragged cloth edges now studded with thick ectoplasmic teeth — slavering jaws — cotton stuffing and acidic-tear-foam spread out, sliding across the ground.

Gasps and shrieks broke out among the crowd. Pom Pom leapt from the rotting log and rushed to the edge of the clearing to double over and retch into the snow.

Above the noise and confusion, Feist screamed, face contorted beyond recognition, toothy, ravening. “You think you can face a human? Fools. Cowards. Weaklings. Pathetic, pathetic, PATHETIC! If you’re so strong, FIGHT ME!”

The shriek rolled through the clearing, echoing off crags of rock just out of sight, and in the ringing silence that followed there was just one sound: Undyne clapping. Her face was stretched in a grin of exhilaration, wild and wide as a craggy storm-lashed seashore. “That was awesome!”

The Royal Guard looked queasy and glassy-eyed, but to his credit he stayed upright. “Impressive,” he managed to say. “I’ve never seen anything so intimidating in training before.” He wagged his tail in genuine dog greeting. “Please to meet you. I’m Barkmore.”

“Feist.”

Barkmore held out his hand for a more official greeting, but found nothing to take hold of, only torn cotton and ragged ectoplasmic edges and foamy drool; he let his hand hang in the air for a moment, then drop.

There was a cough, and Pom Pom tottered up, wiping their chin with a sleeve. “We already have a Feist on the Snowdin team.” They twitched an ear, indicating a member of the crowd: sure enough, it was one of the sleek little hunting dogs that were commonly given that name. “It would be too weird, having two people in the same contingent with the same name,” Feist the dog yapped. The word “weird” hung in the air.

“Call me whatever you want…” Feist spat. And heard phantom voices, as if the rest of the Blooks were there.

_“… just don’t call me late for dinner,” Happy quipped, with a corny wink. Napster giggled, although they didn’t follow the wordplay, because they trusted Happy and the others, trusted that everything would be explained if they asked. Staid, saying Happy’s name in an affectionate, amused warning not to spoil the significance of the moment._

Feist didn’t finish the statement. But there was no need to.

“See you at the first day of training,” Barkmore said. And addressed the rest of the inductees. “North riverbank. Tomorrow. Same time.”

Undyne rushed forward and wrapped Feist in a suffocating hug. “That was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen! I loved it! Please say you’re gonna keep the teeth!”

Feist looked around at the trampled snow, at the drifted clots of cotton and the pits in the snow eaten away by tear-acid. And felt a rush of giddy elated triumph. And smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, chronology has gone out-of-sync between the two plotlines of this story and with Undertale canon. The mismatch with canon is mostly deliberate; I'm pretty sure all the human children were supposed to have fallen and been killed by Asgore before Undyne, Alphys, etc were even born, but I'm intentionally condensing that timeline, and might even have the sixth child fall after Happy has become Mettaton. However, Feist's story is now well ahead of the Happy/Napster/Human Children storyline, and that's a hazard of writing chapter-by-chapter without sticking to a well-defined story plan -- please excuse me for it. I didn't start out intending to give each Human Child a chapter (or chapters) of their own, and so that's taking longer than I had expected; meanwhile, the scene in this chapter is one of the first scenes I pictured way back when I started planning this story -- in the summer of 2016! fully two years ago! -- and so I felt I needed to get it on paper now. Undyne isn't really joining the Guard before the fourth child has even fallen! After I've published more, I'll re-arrange the order of some chapters in this section to correct this issue.


	10. Steadfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: This chapter has been completed! Thank you for your patience!!  
> 

Toriel and Staid were the last to know about Melody’s death. And the first. Without having to exchange a word, they both knew the truth as soon as they discovered her room empty, all her clothes neatly folded and put away, not a scrap of paper out of place. While she liked to wander the ruins, if this were an ordinary outing she would not have left without letting both parents know where she planned to go and how long she planned to be there. And yet, the day before she’d been so full of delight as she’d danced with the Blooks and Shyrens, eaten Toriel’s cinnamon rolls, and helped to clean up the kitchen, that they’d tacitly both believed that she’d put aside her desire to leave the Ruins and plan to approach Asgore. So, they hoped. They kept hoping until Napstablook and Happy appeared in the claustrophobic space under the house, their forms diaphanous and their expressions broadcasting the Underground’s latest news before they could say a word: Asgore had successfully acquired another human soul.

Napster and Happy didn’t linger long in Home. Toriel and Staid had partnered in an adagio of mourning twice before; they would help each other through this too. Napster shied away from the galling intensity of the others’ heartache and their own; they retreated to the familiar routine of tending the farm, letting the repetitious, familiar actions form a scaffold to keep themself upright. Happy, to keep himself from dark ruminations of wondering what had gone wrong this time and what he should have done to stop it, focused his whole being on spreading aggressive cheer among his oblivious and discomfited neighbors. He toured among the Woshuas and Moldbyggs with a litany of corny lines, overflowing with positivity the way a cup of sweet milk overflows when its contents are displaced by a rock.

After many days — that felt like one long amorphous conglomeration of a day — Happy decided it was time for a new approach. He didn’t feel ready to move on. He was still struck often, unexpectedly, by vivid memories of Melody’s quick shy shows of affection for her family members, the expressions of focus and and ecstasy that flickered across her face when she danced, the graceful motion that extended to every moment of every finger — and this new loss stirred up memories of past losses, of Patience and Anders and the ghost siblings he had almost met, and even of Feist. But he had to do something new — all of Blook Acres would sink into an emotional quagmire if he didn’t.

Not seeing Napster out among the snail pens, he called at the blue door’s house. When he heard no response, he poked his head through.

Napstablook was lying on their back, floating in the illusion of space, headphones on. They turned their face towards Happy as he phased the rest of the way through the wall. Pulled off one earpiece, and muffled sounds of shrieks and moans — a recording of a traditional ghost choir — leaked out.

“Napster, hey,” Happy began, voice soft and thin as tissue paper. “It’s been a while since we’ve practiced. With the whole band. You, me, Shyren, Sister.”

Napster lay still, the galaxies kept wheeling beneath. “… oh… we’re still…?”

Happy drifted closer, spoke louder. “Of course we are! And we’re going to get rusty if we don’t practice soon.”

A heavy sigh inflated and deflated Napster’s form.

Happy let his eyes droop shut, and echoed Napster’s sigh. “I know how you feel. We’re never going to forget her… we’re never going to forget any of them.” He gave a little shake and straightened up. “But don’t you think, if Melody were here now, she’d want to see us performing?”

Napster still didn’t move. Looked flatly at Happy.

Happy flew to Napster’s side, floating high in the air to project confidence. “Even if you don’t feel like it, I’m going to let you in on a secret performers live by. I heard it in New Home a while back. We’re performers now, so we should try it. The secret is: ‘Fake it ‘til you make it.’”

Napster blinked unevenly, as if waking up, and spoke, fumbling at the syllables. “… ache it ‘til you… wake it…?”

“Yes, exactly.” Happy chirped, a little too brightly. “Shake it til you bake it.”

Rhyming was one form of wordplay with which Napster felt comfortable, and Happy knew it. “Steak it til you cake it,” Napster tossed back, their soft voice a gentle underhand pitch.

“Rake it til you… uh… snake it? Um…”

“Remake it til you break it.”

“Outtake it til you… you…” Happy pointed an arm, “… aah… you win.”

A smile just barely touched Napster’s face. The gloomy darkness of the celestial illusion dimmed like the night sky flooded by dawn’s sunlight.

“Come on,” said Happy, “Let’s go find the Shyrens.”

After scouring the shores, parting a final fringe of marsh grass, they found Sister and Brother lounging on a tiny spit of land poking out into flat black water, the two of them so prostrate and still that they seemed to melt into the springy green moss underneath them. Sister’s lantern perked as the ghosts approached, and she tilted her head enough to free one eye from the fins that hung down over it.

“I’m glad we finally found you. Napster and I were thinking… we should all start rehearsing again…” Happy spoke. Sister still winced at the suddenness of words.

“How can we? Our band…” Sister said. Brother’s eye-ridges shifted, the subtle movement endorsing her words. “… our family…” her voice trailed off.

“We’re still a family. All of us who are still here. And families take care of each other, through the bad times and the good times.” Happy gave them a reassuring smile and looked up and down the still damp shore. “Where’s Shyren and Agent?”

Brother shifted his scaled bulk as if he’d become fused to the ground and it would take a supreme effort to separate. His shrug indicated the dark water next to them — the other two were in the depths.

“Could you get them? Please?”

Sister dawdled, looking down at her fins, then nodded. She slipped under the water without a sound.

The concentric rings she left behind had just barely stopped agitating the water’s surface when she was back. She blinked her bright, flat eyes, looking downwards. “They… don’t want to see anybody… right now…”

Happy’s pink color dimmed, but his smile intensified. “I know it’s hard,” he cajoled. “But we should all be together right now. It’ll be good for our whole family. Trust me. Ghosts know about these things.”

Sister dove under the surface once again. The water lapped at the shore in gradually-slowing waves, returned to glassy stillness… and she had still not returned. A tightness crept up in Happy’s soul, and he fought down fear that he had acted too late. Napster looked from Happy to the featureless water and back again, their eyes collecting moisture like the drops that beaded on the blades of long grass behind them. Brother lay still, eyes closed.

Finally, Sister emerged, with Shyren and Agent behind.

Agent’s expression was downcast, and Shyren’s face was entirely hidden behind her fins. Happy appealed to the more talkative of them. “I need your help,” he said, his voice precipitating a businesslike tone, a hint of urgency, a subtle froth of optimism. “We have to get the band back together. To put on a show for Toriel and Staid.”

Agent pursed his wide lips. “I don’t…” He didn’t need to complete the statement to make his meaning known. I don’t understand why. I don’t want to.

“What we feel like doesn’t matter now. What matters is that we all get ourselves over to Toriel and Staid, and we show them that none of us are going to leave them alone, no matter what.” His voice crackled with an edge of bossiness, and Napstablook directed a cringe his way, but Happy didn’t care. “ _That_ is what families _do_ ,” he added. It sounded harsh, even to himself, leveraging the Shyrens’ inexperience with familial relationships against their stated will. They had opened themselves to the vulnerability of relationships in faith and hope, and it had brought them grief. This was the time he should soothe them, convince them with soft empathy and sweet words and patient encouragement — but he didn’t have the strength for it. He was sick of losing family. When everyone was together, when everyone was _happy_ , then sacrificing his politeness in the short term would be worth it.

Five pairs of eyes turned to him, but Happy locked eyes with Agent, silently pleading — if he could be convinced, Sister wouldn’t feel she needed to hold out to support him, and then Shyren and Brother would follow their bolder halves.

Agent nodded. The tension in the little clearing broke like a soap bubble.

“Just wait and see, Toriel and Staid will be so glad to see us, the performance is gonna be good for everyone…” Happy babbled, as the group started in the direction of Blook Acres.

As they all rounded the final tunnel corner and Blook Acres came into view, Shyren and Sister’s lanterns flicked upwards and gained twin bright centers. A moment later the ghosts saw what the fish had sensed: a greenish-white figure, upright and floating, almost appearing to glow against the darkness of the yard.

Happy’s soul jolted painfully. It was Staid. Without a body. His mind raced. If Staid had simply wanted their company, they could have sent a message passed through word-of-mouth, monster to monster, Ice Cap to Aaron. The message had to be carefully coded, of course, and they had never settled on one single code, but it didn’t matter; any grapevine-carried message that wasn’t about snail commerce could be assumed to be a signal from Staid, and it would take less than a day before Happy and Napster showed up at Home.

But if Staid had traveled in-person, they were in a hurry. If they had left their body behind, that hurry was extreme.

One guess barged its way into Happy’s mind: unfathomable, ludicrous, spiked with conflicting emotions of fascination and dread.

Staid saw the group approaching. As soon as they were close enough to speak without projecting across the yard, they confirmed the guess with two words: “Another one.”

As the Shyren looked at each other, not yet caught on, Napster put voice to the fear they shared with Happy. “… oh no… not now…”

Happy felt as if he were pulling the Blooks’ old market-going cart and someone kept on piling new weight. But pressure spurred him on. He kicked up the intensity of his optimistic expression and clapped his arms together.

“So we’ll have a new audience for the new routine we were just about to practice! Perfect timing.”

The Shyrens dipped in the air, confusion replaced by understanding replaced by new uncertainty.

Staid looked to them and their eye crinkled. They bit their lip. “Actually… I was thinking… it might be better… if only Happy came. Just for now.”

The Shyrens looked at him, and back to Staid. Napster blinked and looked away to stare at nothing, brow furrowed, bobbing in a slow sad nod.

Staid sputtered with haste. “It’s not anything against all of you, of course! It’s just that… You know, it’s hard for a child to be in a new place. Meeting a lot of new people all at the same time. They get… they get timid. We can all understand that. And well… Happy, you’ve got that special skill in putting people at ease…”

Happy’s soul gave a pulse of joy — being singled out, trusted, praised in front of others — it was everything that he craved. He puffed up with pride. “Of course. I’ll do my best to make this poor little child feel a bit less intimidated.”

Staid looked around the yard, wincing placatingly. “I’m sorry to rush off, everyone. I’ll come back a little later, okay?”

Happy followed Staid across the yard, around the bend, over the marshes. Both incorporeal, they made good time, their unencumbered flight bee-lining across any sort of ground, water and flowers and then trees blurring into a watercolor smear.

Happy’s pride and anticipation buoyed him. He matched pace with Staid, beaming. “So! Tell me about the little darling.”

Staid gave no response for one moment, two moments. When they did speak, their voice was subdued, clipped. “I lied.”

A cold chill spread across Happy’s surface. “ _No child?_ … What… ”

“No, no…” Staid interrupted. “There’s a child. But… the reason I wanted just you to come. Keeping him from meeting Napster and the Shyrens right away… it’s not to make him more comfortable. It’s for _them_.”

Happy’s insides clenched into a painful, spiky mass. His mind flooded with old war stories, rumors of the violence of humans, half-remembered former lives’ experiences. “Ah… ergh…”

Staid understood his fear from that one strangled syllable, without having to look at him. “No, it’s not that either. It’s not _bad_. Not really. It’s that… well… Toriel and I don’t… speak his language. I think you might. What with the time you spent in New Home, talking with all sorts of people.”

Happy chewed over this revelation. He only spoke one language… pretty much everyone in the Underground did. Unless… certainly a human child didn’t speak Moldsmal. Or _Tem?_

Snowy hills and dark forests passed below, unnoticed; minutes passed, unnoticed; Staid focused on the road, and Happy focused on his speculation, anxiety weighing his soul more heavily the closer they got.

They were approaching the column-flanked purple door in its cracked stone wall; upon it; through it. They rose up the stairwell beneath the house called Home and rounded the bannisters to enter the living room.

Like most ghosts, Happy relied upon his sense of sight; so his first impression was that the house looked the same as it always did. The light had its familiar buttery quality, spilling from lamps and stirred by flickers from the mild magical fireplace. The rest of his senses chimed in one by one: the sound of the fireplace’s carefully-calibrated calming crackle, the warmth of the house, a scent of hot oil and flour and spices from the kitchen that stimulated a sense of nostalgia but was too fresh to stir his ghostly appetite. He wondered what he had been expecting — disorder, wrecked furniture? At least some difference that would explain Staid’s unease.

He scanned the rest of the living room and found Toriel sitting in her armchair. She caught his eyes and sent a smile of greeting. It was uncomfortably unlike her usual smile, even though it was inviting and enthusiastic… that was just it; her glad expression was _too much_. On just about anyone else, a look of strained politeness would have been easy enough to understand, simple to navigate… possibly a welcome opportunity for Happy to demonstrate that he’d finally learned that sometimes the best way to cheer someone was to _leave them alone_. But Happy knew Toriel too well; as he had grown from infancy he had seen Toriel worried, in pain, angry, grieving… Her expressions of emotion were always tempered through her naturally soft and gentle soul, but they were genuine. Now there was a stiffness in her posture, a tightness around her eyes, that showed she was trying to be _deceptive_ about how she felt… this was a new kind of disconcerting.

The new human child was sitting on the floor facing Toriel’s bookshelf. Even though he was facing away, Happy could see that a thick book lay open on his lap, and there was a matching gap in Toriel’s shelf in front of him. A second book lay on the floor by his side; a slim volume with a purple cover, heavily finger-worn.

Happy sized him up. Looked ordinary enough, at least from this angle. Bigger than any of the other human children had been when they had fallen, in every sense: adolescent, tall, heavy-set. That was good; Boss monster furniture and utensils and clothes were scaled for larger people that the average human. Patience had needed stools set all around the house until she grew; Anders had benefitted from her hand-me-downs, but had always been blundering into Toriel’s skirts as he dashed about (Toriel might have accidentally kicked him once. Or twice. She never admitted it.)

“We’re here!” Staid said, with an upward lilt… And there was a stiffness, an element of artifice, underlying the cheerfulness in their voice too.

The boy twisted to look at the ghosts, putting one hand on the floor to steady himself. He was wearing glasses, their lenses badly scuffed; he had to tilt his head downwards to find a clear section to peer through.

 _So this is why they wanted me alone_ , Happy thought. There was an optician in Snowdin, and several more in New Home, but none in the Ruins. Toriel had reading glasses, but she’d never had to have them repaired, adjusted or replaced — and probably never would, since she was careful by nature and never got any older. Getting new prescription lenses for a person that wasn’t supposed to be exist would be quite the trick… and Staid and Toriel were not only relying on Happy to pull it off, but apparently trusting him to figure it out before the child was even introduced to other family members… to save the child embarrassment, no doubt. Happy puffed up with pride.

He put on his most inviting, nonthreatening smile, and opened his mouth.

The boy interrupted him. “Pinky and Inky! I’m a fan.” He smiled, eyes disappearing behind the scuffs on his glasses. He shifted and extended a hand to shake.

The phrase sure sounded like the common language, and without even an accent, but the words made no sense, and — Happy flushed fuchsia — hearing the word “fan” made him feel dizzy and overheated and fantastic. He froze for one second, recovered himself, and — right, he’d heard this was a human custom — extended his own arm. “Hello! I’m Happy.”

The boy tilted his head again, saw Happy’s inches-long knub-arm, and let his own arm sink, curling his fingers against his palm awkwardly. “Like from the Seven Dwarves? I should’ve expected it’d be fairytales down here, not video games. My bad.” He paused. “I’m Ethan.”

All the words made sense individually, but not the way they were built into sentences. And that one sentence was structured as an apology, but the child’s tone wasn’t at all regretful. The smile he had worn at first glance had faded, and now he looked… bored? _Closed off._ Happy glanced at Staid, but they had left; probably to retrieve their body. He forged ahead blindly.

“So... Ethan… Welcome. …How are you liking the Underground?”

Ethan pursed his lips. “ _Well_ … When I fell my bones got broken in one or ten places, so you know, that was _fun_. But Goat Lady healed me up.”

Happy felt Toriel’s uncomfortable stiffening from across the room without having to look at her. “My Child… please. Call me Toriel.”

“Okay, Toriel… but _you_ don’t call me ‘Child’.” Ethan’s words flowed as smoothly and burned as caustically as aged liquor. Toriel let a hand creep up to her chest, as if feeling the burning in her esophagus.

“Great! So you’re okay now!” Happy interjected in haste.

“Yeah. Toriel’s been taking good care of me,” Ethan drawled. He turned his face towards her, and his voice softened. “I’m grateful. Don’t think I’m not.” Toriel managed a weak smile in return. Ethan turned back to Happy and squinted impatiently — Happy could tell it by the movement of his cheeks although his eyes were obscured. “But my glasses fell off and got all scuffed up — see? — She said there’s no quick way to fix that.”

“Oh no,” Happy gave a sympathetic coo, “That must be hard for you.”

“Well…” One corner of Ethan’s mouth quirked into a smirk. “There’s a silver lining. Now I don’t have to see all the ugly people down here.”

Staid had returned; their sharp intake of breath was audible.

Happy’s response came as a reflex. “Ah, poor dear. You’ve been by the mirror in the hallway.”

Ethan’s smirk disappeared. Happy blinked, surprised at himself, but held his gaze.

Then Ethan’s face broke into a smile — not the sardonic smirk from before, but a smile that engaged his whole face, an expression of genuine delight — as he boomed his response. “ _Bold words from a flying phlegm-wad_.”

Laughter bubbled up from inside Happy, rose into the air, filled the room… and then Ethan started laughing too, the two of them joined in gleeful catharsis as the tension lifted.

Happy looked at Toriel — nope, the tension was still very much present. It was intensified in her look of disapproval, and echoed in Staid’s stiff posture. With a twinge, Happy realized the language that his beloved parent expected him to speak fluently was _rudeness_. Well… that was deflating. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel pleased with himself — he held his bright color.

Ethan scrabbled his hand against the floor next to him until he grasped the slim purple book. “Hey, uh… You wanna read some jokes I wrote? They’re not very good, but…”

“ _Would_ I _ever_ ,” Happy purred, took the book, and flipped it open. The handwriting was crowded and hard to work out. He flipped past the early pages — the best work would be the most recent, he’d assume — until he found a page only half-full. Then his eyes popped wide. This had been written very recently — within the Underground.

\--How many Migosp does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Only two, but don’t ask me how they got in there.--

“ _Well then_ ,” Happy murmured, and read to the bottom.

\--Why does Toriel make pies? She keeps burning the salad.—

Happy sucked in his breath and flipped hastily to an earlier part of the book. Here there were jokes about humans… but he understood the subject readily enough. “That is… certainly an anatomical novelty,” Happy muttered. He read more and, forgetting the parents only feet away, whistled in appreciation. When he had been younger and had spent time alone roaming New Home City, he’d been able to draw satisfying reactions from partygoers with his quips, the more cynical and irreverent the better. Still, everything he’d been able to come up with had been clumsy and cliché compared to these caustic little gems. He was surprised, he was _shocked_ , and it was marvelous. He flicked his eyes up at Ethan. “This is some hot material. You ever do stand-up?”

Ethan shook his head. “Never even seen it. I mean, I’ve seen it on TV.”

Before Happy realized what was happening, the book lifted out of his grasp, pinched between Toriel’s thumb and forefinger. He helplessly watched her adjust it closer and farther from her face to focus on its cramped script. “Uh… Toriel, you probably don’t want to…”

She gave him the glare that could silence any denizen of the Ruins.

Happy turned back to Ethan, trying not to think about her probable reaction. “Once I went to this little club in the capitol. Dingy as all get out. Dingier than the Ruins here, if you can believe that. But the routines were just as dusty. These jokes would have absolutely blown them away.”

Ethan was sitting up straighter now, engaged again, attention piqued. “You’re shitting me. It’s not that good.”

“It’s _new_. It’s _different_. It’s _fresh_. We monsters are absolutely starving for that. Let me tell you, once you’ve been here for a while…”

Ethan slumped again. “Oh… no. I’m not staying.”

So that was it. The reason Staid had been in such a hurry to collect him from Blook Acres. The reason Staid and Toriel put their trust in him. Happy took a deep breath and put on a bright, appealing expression.

“I know the Ruins don’t look like much… Nothing like what you’re used to on the Surface, of course. I know I said the Ruins are dingy… maybe they are, a little. But the treasure of the Underground is its people, and Toriel here is the very best of us. And Staid is too… but they’re my parent, so I’m a little biased.”

Ethan twisted his mouth into a sour expression, and Happy switched from hoping Toriel hadn’t been reading the rude jokes to hoping she had been totally absorbed in reading them. He spoke with haste. “Tell you what, Ethan. Let me show you around. I know this City pretty well. Parts of it, anyway. I’ll show you the highlights. And we can explore the other parts together.”

Ethan considered, and nodded. “Sounds good. But just for one day, okay? Then I’ve got to get going.”

“But what if you come love this City as much as I do?” Happy interjected, hoping his voice came across as inviting and not coercive.

Ethan shook his head, face set in a stoic expression. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

Happy could feel Toriel’s frustration radiating from behind him. He could practically smell smoke coming off of her.

She spoke between clenched teeth, her tone as thin as pasta. “This book…” Happy twisted to look at her. She was still cupping the spine of the slim volume open in one hand; with her other hand she pinched the open pages as if they were physically filthy. “If you’re going to fill a book with jokes, they should be _nice_ jokes.”

“You’re not my mom,” Ethan countered, petulance making his face look childish.

A sound of tearing; it was quiet but reverberated through the entire room. Toriel looked down at her hands, eyes wide, blinked; the pages she had been grasping were lolling out of the binding.

“HEY!” Ethan barked, half-rising.

The smell of smoke intensified…

… something was literally burning…

Toriel dropped the book; its edges bore her fingerprints, singed brown. The smoky smell clarified into the smell of burnt paper; and then right behind it, overpowering it, the cloying scent of browned oil, burnt sugar. Toriel gasped and bounded to the kitchen. Staid wheeled on their base and chased after her. Happy looked back to Ethan as he slammed shut the book in his lap.

Staid entered the kitchen just as Toriel was setting the cookie tray on top of the oven, its contents dark and shrunken; gripping a dishtowel, she flapped at the burnt smell that hung over the cookies and open oven. As Staid watched, her hand sank, her movements weakened and stalled. She shut the oven door slowly and, gripping the edge of the rangetop with both hands, lowered her bulk into a crouch, creakily, like a junkpile settling, bowing her head. Her shoulders shuddered once, twice. Staid picked up their base and floated to her side. Her face was mostly obscured between her arms, but Staid could still see fat tears rolling down the sides of her nose.

“I’m a bad mother,” Toriel choked out, barely audible.

“You’re not,” Staid murmured.

“That’s right. I’m not any sort of mother at all.”

Staid crept closer and nuzzled at her shoulder. “You’re a very good mother in very hard circumstances. And you’re doing better than anybody else could.”

Toriel stared blankly through the oven door’s window into the darkness of the interior. “I don’t know what to do. …He’s so… sharp.” Staid thought of the fireplace tools: filed down until they were rounded, dull, safe.

A small, staged cough sounded from the kitchen doorway. Toriel cracked the oven door open again and peered inside, miming at inspecting it for damage. Staid turned toward Happy.

“Ethan and I are gonna go tour the Ruins now. Um… if that’s okay…”

“It’s good,” Staid nodded. “Don’t forget to show him the vista. And that one cute house we used to like to stop and look at when you were little. …Make him feel welcome.”

Happy’s voice dwindled to almost nothing. “And if I can’t?”

Toriel shut the oven door with a firm thump, keeping her head down; her mouth was clenched even tighter.

“Just do your best,” Staid said. “That’s all you can do.”

Happy bobbed, turned, and left.

His voice echoed from the living room, words muffled into indistinctness, tone cheerful. One set of footsteps sounded across the wood floor. The front door closed, carelessly but not intentionally loud.

Toriel still crouched before the oven door, head lowered. She spoke, her thin tone now like sheet metal. “So that’s it, then. We just let him go. We send this child away to die.”

“He’s not a child…” Staid ventured.

“A lot of good that will do when we’ve given him to Asgore.”

“I don’t… I don’t think we have a choice,” Staid ventured. “Don’t you see his determination? And what’s better: that we send him off with directions and supplies and our blessings? Or that we get him to say he’s going to stay, and then he sneaks away in secret?”

Toriel looked at Staid then, eyes red-rimmed and piercing. Staid tried to calm their anxiously throbbing soul, failing, almost going dizzy with the attempt. Had mentioning Melody, so recently here in this kitchen, so recently gone, been far too cruel? Staid wanted to comfort her, not to hurt her even more. Underneath Staid’s fear of hurting a loved one lurked another, more visceral fear: the most horrific things could happen if a Dreemurr’s grief turned into rage.

“All I’m saying is…” Staid panted. Toriel waited, expression unmoving, unmoved.

“All I… All I know is… what I know from what I’ve lived. I was afraid to let my children leave me, even if it was just to Snowdin, even if it was just go to market in New Home. …But a day came when they weren’t children anymore. It was time. So I did. I watched them leave for New Home without me. And then… and then…” Staid couldn’t bear to speak of the deaths of Asriel and Chara. They didn’t have to; Toriel’s hands fell nervelessly from the stove and she sat down, hard; she understood. They steeled themself and continued. “Feist and Napster… I thought I had lost them. I was sure of it. But they came back, and they were okay. They were better than okay, because they had grown and become their own people… in ways that I couldn’t have planned for them, better ways than I would ever have thought of. And Happy… I should have been strong to help them, but… I couldn’t. I needed _them_ to help _me_. And they _did_.” Staid drew a shaky breath. “But my other children… the ones that should have been the safest, the ones I still held inside my soul… those are the ones that I lost. So I said… so I said… So I said to myself, I thought I could protect my children, but I can’t. It’s impossible. All I can do is try to make sure I’m not what hurts them.”

Toriel regarded Staid through her wet, red eyes for a long, still moment. Then she reached out her hand. Staid nestled in under her arm, burying their face against her shoulder. Together, the two waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The draft included another whole section following these two, but my beta-reader advised me that this chapter should end here; it will be split into two, like how "Cousins" and "Bodies" from part 2 were one narrative section split into two chapters.


	11. Steadfast pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had additional help in writing this chapter -- feat. jokes/burns contributed by Tony Watts, Quintin and Nebula, via Discord. Thank you!!!

Happy and Ethan’s ramble through the Ruins was heartening, although slow. Ethan could see the path at his feet well enough to keep from stumbling over rough paving or cantankerous stones, and to solve the puzzles to disable the spiked floors, but the abrasions clouding the centers of the lenses made it difficult to see directly ahead. Trying to appreciate the vista had been a complete wash. But Happy led him on with unflagging energy. It was all turning out for the best anyway, he thought with near-manic hope — a longer walk meant more time to build up the Underground with his words; and his constant chattering was a discreet way to provide Ethan with a point of reference to follow, so he didn’t have to worry that he was talking an off-putting amount.

When they passed through places that allowed him to speak without being overheard, heavy stone archways and copses of gnarled trees and narrow tunnels, Happy switched from lauding the Underground’s landmarks and culture to whispering its gossip. He had been stashing the juiciest stories from his time in New Home City in his memory, carefully curating them in his thoughts, editing and embellishing them in just the right places, in the hopes that someday he would meet someone who would appreciate them as much as he did. Ethan made a gratifyingly responsive audience, asking for elaboration and tossing back perfectly-timed, nimble snark. Happy let his enjoyment show, hoping Ethan would catch his enthusiasm and be influenced to stay in the Underground; he laughed with abandon, he praised Ethan’s cleverness with shameless admiration. And then, when the two occasionally stopped for Happy to catch his breath, Ethan would explain lines from his journal — references to events and celebrities on the surface, of whom Happy had never heard. The fear that Ethan would leave, the knowledge of how that would break Toriel and Staid when they were already fragile, was ever-present, galling, in the back of Happy’s mind; but with practiced skill, he forced the thoughts he didn’t want to acknowledge into silence. He was having fun, more fun than he had had in years, outside of musical performances; and if he just tried hard enough, if he could just make Ethan feel happy enough, it wouldn’t have to end.

Finally, they entered a small room off the main hallway. Toriel’s care and generosity were in clear evidence here; in the manicured ivy on the wall, on the tasteful border of red leaves sprinkled on the ground, and in the filled bowl of monster candy on a pedestal in the room’s center.

Happy flew to the bowl and removed two pieces of monster candy. Offering one to Ethan, he said, “Allow me. This bowl is a little irritable.”

“The _bowl_ is… ah, okay.” Ethan accepted the candy.

Happy couldn’t eat the sugar, but he rolled it around in his mouth anyway, in solidarity. And now, under cover of the babbling of twin canals flanking the room, he switched back into gossip mode, telling stories of the inhabitants of Waterfall.

“… Despite all that muscle… I mean, with dozens of abs you’d expect him to have at least a little guts underneath it, right? Nope. Totally for show. He’s terrified of Napster… that’s my cousin, the gentle one I told you about, remember? And so I thought: I bet I can scare him just by floating up to him and whispering…”

“Boo?” Ethan supplied.

Happy rolled his eyes. “Ugh — that’s a stereotype, you know. Naw… _anything_. I floated right up and whispered: ‘Water sausages on sale.’ Dude jumped out of his skin! Like… dog residue city.”

Ethan snorted. Then he stiffened, frowned, and tilted his head, trying to get a good look at the room’s entrance. “Who’s that?”

Happy looked up just as a wet, rattling voice intoned, _“Eat your greens,”_ and saw the orange, leafy-headed monster lurking in the doorway.

“Oh! That’s just a Vegetoid.” Happy supplied. “… Eat it.”

_“What.”_

“No really, I’m serious. Just go up and take a bite. You won’t hurt it; they regenerate. It’ll make it happy.”

Ethan stood, took a step towards the Vegetoid, which ruffled its leaves in pleased anticipation… And, with one fluid motion, leaned back to the bowl of monster candy, took another piece, and popped it into his mouth. The Vegetoid scrunched its orange, knobby face in consternation as Ethan chewed with exaggerated relish. It spun on its dull base and thwumped away.

“Dude… that was cold…” said Happy, snickering.

“Fuck vegetables,” Ethan said around the candy, and settled back down next to Happy.

Happy _tsk_ ed. “Not my type. But then, I’m attracted to ghosts, so who am I to judge your tastes.”

Ethan snickered, swallowed, paused, and looked down at his feet. Then he glanced up at Happy. “Today has been really good. I mean… When I fell, everything was terrible, but then you…” He looked down at his feet again. “I’ve enjoyed spending time with you. Um…”

Happy’s soul flared with renewed hope. If Ethan was enjoying his time with Happy this much, maybe he wouldn’t want to leave. Distracted by this possibility, Happy reached for another piece of monster candy… and the bowl tipped over, contents cascading onto the floor.

“Ah!” Ethan grabbed up the bowl and went down on hands and knees, scrabbling for the rolling candies. “Here, lemme help.”

Seeing Ethan’s human hands and long arms making short work of collecting the candies, Happy floated out of the way. He absentmindedly popped the piece of candy he had been holding into his mouth and swallowed – ugh, now his ectoplasm was going to try to digest it anyway, he’d have to pass it out later, gross — and responded.

“I’m so glad to hear you say that. Because I feel the same way. I’m glad we met.” The sentiment was sincere, but Happy’s desperation to keep Ethan in the Underground gave it an unintended note of longing.

Ethan glanced up at him and then away, back down at the bowl on the ground, smiling, a light blush touching his cheeks.

 _Ah,_ Happy thought. _I learned this friendship technique in the capital. He’s using Flirt._

Happy let his ectoplasm take on a contented rosy color, and asked, “I’m sorry, I interrupted you… Clumsy me. What were you going to say?”

Ethan stood, and rubbed one hand against the nape of his neck, still not looking directly at Happy. “Eh… just some Lord Byron -type bullshit.”

“I only understand about half of anything you say, darling,” Happy crooned, “But I do love the way you say it.”

Ethan looked directly at Happy then, and his expression was so _glad_ that Happy felt sure he’d won Ethan’s friendship, won the day, won a victory for himself and his family…

… and then Ethan was moving closer, leaning in, closing his eyes, and Happy’s soul gave a jolt of warning because _Flirt_ was always light and playful and casual and suddenly this didn’t feel casual anymore.

He floated back just before Ethan’s face would have touched his. “Wait… stop. You aren’t… Are you courting me?”

Ethan blinked, and coughed a nervous little laugh. “ _Courting?_ Uh, _no_. I know I said _Lord Byron_ but I’m not actually from eighteen-hundred.”

“No, I mean…” Happy’s victory was falling and scattering like the candies. “Ethan… Flirting is one thing, but you can’t… I’m an adult.”

Ethan leaned back, and suddenly there was that same dark, closed look that had shadowed his face back at the house. “ _I’m_ an adult.”

“No. Listen to me. I’m way too old for you.”

Ethan gave him a suspicious side-eye. “Like… How many years?”

“Try ‘decades.’”

Ethan sucked his breath in between his teeth and turned away. He mumbled, “How am I supposed to know how old you are? You look like a flying fetus.”

Happy’s stern expression gave way to contriteness. “Ethan… I didn’t mean to make you think… I’m really sorry.”

Ethan pawed at the back of his neck again. He didn’t seem angry; just embarrassed. “I really didn’t know. I thought you were… I dunno. My age.” And then, with an edge of the bitterness Happy had been expecting, “You seem like a guy who doesn’t have himself figured out yet.”

 _A guy. Himself._ Hadn’t Ethan had been told that ghosts were always _they_ , that Happy was, _had to be,_ a _they_? Or had Ethan thought this the whole time… Had he voiced it, somewhere back along the path? Had Happy missed it in his concentration on the tour? Had he accepted it without thinking because it felt right? _Had someone overheard?_ Happy’s fear of seeing Ethan leave was suddenly overshadowed, compounded, by a fear of losing his own place in his family, in the Underground. Anger flared up inside him — that old impulse to make someone else hurt like he was hurting.

Happy sneered. “I don’t have myself figured out? You’re the one who acts like you’re so clever, when you really just using rude words to make yourself feel invulnerable. All these jokes… It’s because you’re afraid.”

Ethan’s head snapped up and he stared, shock mixed with a tinge of fear.

Happy pushed his advantage, expression gone haughty, voice disdainful. “Listen, Honey, I might be the ghost here, but everyone can see right through you.”

The anger in Ethan’s expression returned, curdled, darkened like a cumulonimbus cloud. He spat, “If you want to manipulate someone, you neg them _before_ you compliment them. Stupid asshole.”

Happy gathered his anger, his bitterness, his fear, to fuel a truly devastating attack…

And then he was crying. Thin acidic tears were pouring out of his eyes, his form shuddered and shrank in on itself, the room filled with the mournful uncanny wailing of a ghost grieving… and he couldn’t stop. Images flooded his mind — the notices of Patience and Anders and Melody’s captures; Feist returning to exile; Staid’s ectoplasmic outline gone empty; Toriel’s face lined with grief — in the midst of the cataclysm inside his soul, some small incongruent part thought: _Is this what it feels like to be Napstablook?_

Ethan’s eyes went wide and he bared his teeth in shock, in bewilderment. He turned and stalked to the entrance of the room, put one hand against the lintel as if catching himself from falling. He stood there for a few moments as Happy’s sobs flowed past him into the corridor. Then he turned and came back, and his anger had ebbed, leaving a bare expression of pure confusion. “What the _fuck_ is going on down here?”

Happy found his voice, scrubbed at his face with his arms. “I’m so sorry. I’ll…” _hiccough_ “I’ll… I’ll tell you…”

They sat side-by-side in the little room, and Happy told him of the long-ago war with humans, of the deaths of Chara and Asriel, of Asgore’s vow, of Toriel’s exile, of Patience, of Anders, of Melody.

By the end of the story, Ethan was nodding slowly. “Jeez. Makes sense, now. Everyone was so cheerful, but I could tell there was something fake about it all, I just didn’t know what and why. Toriel wanted me to stay with her so bad, but I couldn’t just… I’d heard that other kids had disappeared on this mountain in the past. I wasn’t going to be another kid who… who… started singing it not knowing what it was, and then have to continue singing it forever just because. I wasn’t going to play along.” He heaved a deep sigh. “At least now I know it wasn’t _me_ that made everyone so upset. That’s a relief, I guess.”

Happy sniffled, a flicker of renewed hope giving his ectoplasm a rosy glow. “So… so now you can stay.”

Ethan turned to him, his expression suffused with regret and apology that broadcast his answer before he spoke it. “I told you already. I’ve told you from the beginning. I can’t.” He ran his hands through his hair and adjusted his scuffed glasses before continuing. “You were right about what you said earlier, you know. About me being afraid. But now… I wanted to find out what was happening on this mountain, for myself… and I did that. I’m not as afraid as I was before… about not fitting in up there. But I sure don’t fit in down here.” He gave a gentle smirk. “And if I’m as good with words as you kept telling me I am, maybe I can even talk some sense into Asgore.” He looked at his hands. “Oh... uh… About what I called you earlier… you know. An asshole. You’re still an asshole. But… I guess I didn’t think through… I guess I was going to make out with you and then leave anyway. So that probably makes me the bigger asshole.”

Happy smiled at him, a watery sunbeam after drenching storm. “Hey, it’s okay. Asshole solidarity.”

They walked back to the house in silence, both sunk deep in thought. Toriel received them, her face still sad, but free from the turmoil and anguish that had saturated her every word and movement earlier. She had cooked a meal in anticipation of their return, pie crusts golden-brown and perfect; and Staid had prepared Asriel’s old room so Ethan could sleep before he left.

At the exit of the Ruins the three of them gathered to make their good-byes. They gave him a package to help him on his way: washcloths, bandages, a cup, snacks, a few pieces of gold.

“Are you sure I can’t go with you?” Happy ventured.

“How am I supposed to make any new friends along the way with a loser like you tagging along?” Ethan scoffed, and then pulled Happy in for a hug. “I’m not gonna risk getting you in trouble,” he said softly. “But thank you.”

He hugged Staid in turn. Then he turned to Toriel. “Thank you for everything. You were as good to me as my own Mom would’ve been.” She pulled him into her arms, and he returned the embrace; and Toriel discovered, to her surprise, that his hug was one of the warmest she had ever felt.

Ethan stepped out through the massive purple door and pushed it shut behind him. Toriel sank to the ground, back against the stone wall of the tunnel. Staid leaned against her with a shuddering sigh.

Happy phased out of the door and hung in the air just outside it, snowflakes passing through him. He watched Ethan walk into the forested darkness until he disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> I am unable to list my beta-reader / sometimes-co-writer / always-girlfriend&partner, i-am-river, in the Co-Creator section because she does not have an AO3 account, but this story definitely couldn't have been what it is without her. Her tumblr is at http://i-am-river.tumblr.com/  
> I'm at http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/ and my inbox is open.


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